Clapboard porch houses and a working boatyard line a narrow peninsula on the Tred Avon River, with a mansard roofed corner at Morris Street and the Strand.
What Oxford looks like
Oxford sits on a hook shaped peninsula with the on three sides and cutting into the fourth, so a straight street can end at open water within a couple of blocks. The town's original grid dates from 1707 and is still the one its houses sit on. Narrow streets meet at right angles and run out to the shoreline.
Most houses are one storey or a storey and a half, wood frame under plain gable roofs. Brick is kept to foundations, chimneys and end walls. A few taller Victorian buildings break the line, and brick sidewalks run along the tree lined blocks near the center of town.
runs the length of the peninsula to the landing, where the 's mansard roofed corner looks out over the water at the corner with . The ferry itself is a small open barge that takes a handful of cars across to Bellevue and back in under ten minutes.
hauls out and repairs wooden sailboats on the waterfront, and storefronts with hand painted signs line Morris Street a few blocks from the Inn. Town Creek runs behind them, sheltering the harbor from the open river.
Shot in Oxford
Failure to Launch used the for the scene where McConaughey takes Parker out on a borrowed yacht to impress her, only for the boat's real owner to arrive and end the date. Clara's Heart opens on a funeral filmed at Oxford Cemetery, east of the village center.
Clara's Heart, 1988
The opening funeral scene was filmed at the historic Oxford Cemetery, the film's first scene in Maryland before it moves on to Easton, St. Michaels and Baltimore. The cemetery sits on open lawn at the edge of the village, marsh grass and open water behind the headstones.
What Oxford can double for
Stonington, Connecticut
A narrow peninsula with a tight colonial grid running out into the water gives Stonington Borough nearly the same shape as Oxford's own hook into the Tred Avon. Its wood frame and clapboard houses date mostly from the 1700s and 1800s, the same plain scale as the rows off Morris Street. Stonington's streets sit closer together than Oxford's, so a wide shot needs tighter framing to keep the density from showing. The borough's Federal and Greek Revival doorways are a more formal note than Oxford's plainer houses carry. Try searching narrow peninsula colonial grid now.
Noank, Connecticut
Noank sits on its own small peninsula at the mouth of the Mystic River, with a working harbor where lobster boats tie up beside boatyards that still build and repair wooden vessels, the same kind of work Cutts & Case does on the Oxford waterfront. Its houses are plain nineteenth century frame cottages rather than grand ones, close to Oxford's own scale. Noank's streets run narrower and steeper than Oxford's flat grid, so a level tracking shot needs a flatter block to hold the illusion. Lobster pot stacks and mooring buoys on the docks are a Connecticut tell in close shots. Try searching working harbor boatyards now.
Greenport, New York
Greenport's Main Street waterfront business district is lined with plain clapboard and shingled houses much like Oxford's, many dating from the 1880s through the 1910s. A ferry still runs from its harbor to Shelter Island, the same short hop across water Oxford's own ferry makes. Keep wide shots off the busiest block of Main Street, where modern signage is denser than anything in Oxford. The side streets away from the harbor hold the plainer houses. Try searching plain clapboard shingled houses now.
_at_the_Oxford%E2%80%93Bellevue_Ferry_in_Oxford,_Talbot_County,_Maryland.jpg)
