Florence Park, Cowley, Oxford, is named
after the sister of the builder of its adjoining housing estate. The
estate was built in 1934 by Frederick Moss
of N Moss and Son and he also donated the park to the city. N Moss and Son
was a firm of speculative builders that had arrived in
Oxford in 1928 to exploit a market that was desperate for working class
housing. It was the biggest private estate built in Oxford in the inter
war period and consisted of over 600 houses, including a pub, seven shops,
and a doctor's house. Between 1929-33
Moss had built four other housing estates in Oxford. The houses that Moss
had built on the other estates were largely sold to private buyers, but
he built the houses on the Florence Park estate solely to
rent out.
