A house with a shark on it is now a heritage site. Why the homeowner isn't pleased

Story Transcript

When Bill Heine installed a 7.6-metre fibreglass shark crashing through his roof in 1986, Oxford City Council fought him at every step.

Now, 36 years later, the council has made the so-called Headington Shark in Oxford, England, a heritage site, for its "special contribution" to the community.

The irony is not lost on Magnus Hanson-Heine, the late Heine's son and current owner of the shark house. He says the sculpture was erected as an act of defiance against bureaucrats who decide what art is and isn't acceptable for public consumption. 

"I'm not sure they are celebrating the shark," Hanson-Heine told As It Happens guest host Gillian Findlay. "I think they're quite explicitly ignoring the meaning and sentiment, and doing something that's actually quite destructive to that side of the artwork, be that through ignorance, wilful or otherwise." 

Earlier this month, councillors voted to add the shark, along with 16 other additions, to the Oxford Heritage Asset Register, which means any future planning decisions must take the shark into consideration, and be done in a way that "conserves and enhances local character."

Oxford City Council did not respond to a request for comment, but told Oxforfordshire Live the shark was nominated by a member of the public, and its new status "places no additional legal requirements or responsibilities on property owners."

Hanson-Heine says he worries that could make it difficult to remove the shark should he ever want to — though he says he has no intention of doing so. 

The history of the Headington Shark

Hanson-Heine says the meaning behind the shark is twofold — anti-war and anti-bureaucracy.

He says his father, an American expat who studied law at the University of Oxford, got the idea for the sculpture after he heard U.S. warplanes fly over his house one night in April 1986. 

When he woke up the next morning, Heine read in the newspaper that the planes had been on their way to bomb Tripoli in retaliation for Libyan sponsorship of terrorist attacks on U.S. troops.

He found himself thinking about how people believe they are safe in their homes, until war takes that safety away. So he and his friend, sculptor John Buckley, built a massive white shark out of fibreglass. The pair installed the shark on Aug. 9, 1986, 41 years to the day the U.S. dropped its atomic bomb on Nagasaki Japan.

The shark, Hanson-Heine said, "represents a bomb crashing through the roof of a house in an otherwise perfectly ordinary and somewhat leafy suburb."

The other motivation for the shark, he says, was an act of defiance against the city council, which had previously ordered him to remove a giant sculpture of can-can legs — also created by Buckley — from a cinema he operated in town. 

Just like with the legs, Heine had to fight for his shark. Oxford City Council immediately dubbed the sculpture a public danger and ordered it removed, according to a Guardian feature about the Headington Shark's history. But engineers deemed the installation structurally sound, and Heine submitted an official planning application. That, too, was rejected by the council.

Heine appealed the decision, and it was hotly debated in public forums until the city's planning inspector finally ruled it could stay.

"None of those original councillors are still there, and new councillors have come along. And over the intervening 30 odd years, essentially, it's gone from, let's say, its disruptive origins to something that everyone broadly loves in the area," said Hanson-Heine, who now rents it on Airbnb.

"So there's a sense of just enjoyment of the shark and appreciating that quirky tourist attraction and also as a surreal artwork." 

But its original history, he said, should not be forgotten. 

"Before, when they hated it and you couldn't possibly have it and there was a fight to be had there, they were trying to use the planning apparatus and the laws and the sort of threat implied behind that to forcibly remove it," he said.

"And now they happen to have changed their mind and love it, and they're trying to use exactly that same apparatus to force it to remain, in the event that I did want to remove that, which I don't, as it happens. But nevertheless, the one consistent thing throughout is a sense of control and imposition."

Asked how the council has responded to his objections, he said: "Well, they've ignored me completely."

"They have no incentive to do anything other than pretend that it's all fine or I don't exist, which is exactly what's happening," he said. 

Written by Sheena Goodyear with files from The Associated Press. Interview produced by Katie Geleff.