The Lighthouse in Oxford the railway station at Frideswide Square gradually eroded away much of the canal trade. In 1913 William Morris (later Lord Nuffield), without licence, started his own bus service to compete with the city's cumbersome tram network. In 1951, Lord Nuffield further forced change when he acquired the Oxford Canal Basin and proceeded to fill it. Nuffield College and Worcester Street car park now stand where once lay the Basin. This was the death knell of the canal system as a competitive mode of transport in Oxford as technology replaced human labour. An apt example can be found in the reconstruction
William Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield in Longwall Street—described by a local newspaper as The Oxford Motor Palace—changed his business's name from The Oxford Garage to The Morris Garage and still had to take more premises in Queen Street. The Longwall Street site was redeveloped in 1980, retaining the original frontage, and is now used as student accommodation by New College. In 1912 he designed a car, the "bullnose" Morris and using bought-in components (including engines and axles from USA) began to build them at a disused military training college in Cowley, Oxford. The outbreak of World War I saw the nascent car factory largely given