THE SPIKES that once topped Oxford’s very own ‘Berlin Wall’ are on show at a new exhibition.

The Cutteslowe spikes – a set of aluminium, barbed security spikes – once barred people from getting from what was deemed a working-class “slum” into a middle-class area.

Exhibition Forged in Fire, at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock, aims to highlight the metal-working past of the county.

The museum’s audience development officer Lorraine Horne said: “You would be gobsmacked if you saw what we had in our museum store.

“They really divided that part of Oxford. It was the ultimate in class war. People in the private houses wanted to keep the riff-raff, as they saw them, out.

“The developers wanted to protect their investment and their houses from the working class.”

Dating from 1934, spikes adorned the top of a wall built by Clive Saxton’s Urban Housing Company to keep council estate residents out of the more middle-class developments of North Oxford.

The Cutteslowe Wall was demolished and rebuilt several times before finally coming down for good in 1959.

On one occasion during the Second World War a tank took a short cut through the wall by mistake and university students protested against its existence in the 1950s.

Other items on show include a toy pedal car made of steel by disabled ex-miners employed at the government-funded, not-for-profit Austin Junior Car Factory in Bargoed, South Wales.

A 19th and 20th-century anvil and block made from iron and wood, once the essential tool for any blacksmith, and a medieval copper alloy cast figure of a saint are also on show.

County Collections Protect Officer Stephen Barker said: “I’ve tried to find artefacts that people will recognise themselves.

“Some of them might be 2,000-years-old but the hope is that visitors will recognise a lot of them as things from their everyday lives and see themselves reflected in the exhibition.

“We’ve got some great artefacts. We’ve got some medieval bells, which date from the eighth century, which are very rare with only two examples in the country.

“There’s an iron-age mirror from Didcot, which is one of only two that are in the UK.”

The Didcot mirror was successfully secured by the county council’s museums service after a £33,000 fundraising drive to keep it in the county.

Mr Barker added: “There will also be a feature on blacksmiths with a forge installation to show how many of these metal objects would have been made.

“This will have the sights and smells of a forge and will have interactive films and music.

“The whole of civilisation has rested on the development of metals.

“It’s at the heart of everything, metals have been there for thousands of years.”

The exhibition runs from May 2 to July 5.

For information about the exhibition and a series of events linked to it visit oxfordshire.gov.uk/oxfordshiremuseum.