The Headington Shark

In August 2014 the Headington Shark came 24th in a list of the most creative sculptures and statues from around the world

The Shark became the most famous resident of Headington when it landed in the roof of 2 New High Street in the early hours of Saturday 9 August 1986.

This ordinary home (built as a semi-detached house in about 1860 but now attached by a link to a second house to the north) suddenly became the centre of world attention, and the headless shark still excites interest today.

Bill Heine commissioned the shark and still owns the house. An American who studied law at Balliol College, he was running two Oxford cinemas at the time, but since 1988 he has been better known as a Radio Oxford presenter. When pressed by journalists to provide a rationale for the shark, he suggested the following:

The shark was to express someone feeling totally impotent and ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of impotence and anger and desperation…. It is saying something about CND, nuclear power, Chernobyl and Nagasaki.

The headless sculpture, with the label “Untitled 1986” fixed to the gate to the house, was erected on the 41st anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Created by the sculptor John Buckley, it is made of fibreglass, weighs four hundredweight, and is 25 feet long.

Oxford City Council tried to get rid of the shark on the grounds that it was dangerous to the public, but engineers inspected the roof girders that had been specially installed to support it and pronounced the erection safe.