Headington Shark

The Headington Shark, a 25-foot fiberglass shark plunging nose first through the roof of an ordinary brick terraced house on New High Street in Headington, a suburb of Oxford. The sculptor John Buckley made it for the radio presenter Bill Heine, and it landed in the early hours of August 9, 1986, the 41st anniversary of the Nagasaki bomb. The council tried for years to get it removed. Heine won on appeal in 1992, after the planning inspector conceded that it was plainly not in harmony with its surroundings, which was rather the point. It is a private home, so look from the sidewalk.