Archer & Co’s little cartoon of their “By Rail” transport system. This is presumably their advertisement in “Shrimpton’s Popular Oxford Guide” of 1871, according to the heading at the top of the page, and the caption makes clear that: “Experienced Men accompany the vans to their destination. Furniture etc warehoused in separate aired and lock-up compartments”. And on the road-going wagon shown, there are slogans saying: Archer & Co. Oxford: for packing and removing, by road or rail, warehousing furniture, pictures, glass, music, etc to all parts of the country”. The style appears to me somewhat that of Heath Robinson. But his dates are 1872 - 1944 so this is too early to have any conneciton with him. This is presumably just another example of James Archer’s flair for advertsing his services.
As for the location of the “Repository” in New Road,Oxford, I don’t know it. New Road runs, as I recall it, westwards from Queen Street, down the hill (which these days is opposite Nuffield College), past the Castle (now the Malmaison Hotel) and onwards to become Park End Street, in the region of Hythe Bridge Street (all from memory of Oxford in the 1940s/50s/60s). The advert says “A short distance from the County Hall”. Now the County Hall was, in the 1950s, at the Queen Street end of New Road, and was where the County Surveyor’s office was situated, and thus where I obtained summer-holiday employment as an ‘assistant’ (I suppose) to the surveying teams, and went out with them to hold a pole vertical on a hammered-in nail in the tarmac in various places, so that a surveyor could take a reading ‘on that nail-location’ with a theodolite. So the ‘Repository’ was at the east or top end of New Road, which is close to the location where (from memory) James Archer had an interest (that I will record here when opportunity permits) in the ‘New Hotel’ at about that time, and was residing there in one or two census results that I will look-up, and relate to these ruminations.(27.2.17).