The shark first appeared on 9 August 1986, having been commissioned by the house's owner Bill Heine, a local radio presenter. The sculpture, which is reported to weigh and is long, and is made of painted fibreglass, is named Untitled 1986. It took three months to build. The sculpture was erected on the 41st anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. It was designed by sculptor John Buckley and constructed by Anton Castiau, a local carpenter and friend of Buckley. Heine said "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 structure is in deliberate contrast with its otherwise ordinary suburban setting. For the occasion of the shark's 21st anniversary in August 2007, it was renovated by the sculptor, following earlier complaints about the condition of the sculpture and the house. On 26 August 2016 Heine's son Magnus Hanson-Heine bought the house in order to preserve the Shark. The property has been run as an AirBnB guesthouse since 2018.
Controversy
Created by sculptor John Buckley, the shark was controversial when it first appeared. Oxford City Council tried to have it taken down on grounds of safety, and then on the grounds that it had not given planning permission for the shark, offering to host it at the localswimming pool instead, but there was much local support for the shark. Eventually the matter was taken to the central government, where Tony Baldry, a minister in the Department of the Environment, who assessed the case on planning grounds, ruled in 1992 that the shark would be allowed to remain as it did not result in harm to the visual amenity.
Media appearances
Throughout the early 1990s, updates on the controversy surrounding the shark were regularly featured on As It Happens, an interview show on CBC Radio. The unexpected shark appeared in a 2002 newspaper advertising campaign for a new financial advice service offered by Freeserve. The advertisement, designed by M&C Saatchi, featured a photograph of the house with the caption "Freedom to find the mortgage that's right for you". Heine wrote a short book about the shark, which was published in 2011. In 2013, the sculpture was the subject of an April Fools' Day story in the Oxford Mail, which announced the establishment of a fictitious £200,000 fund by Oxford City Council to support the creation of similar sculptures on the roofs of other homes in the area. In 2015, the sculpture was featured in the Channel 4 programme Damned Designs, which focuses on properties that have not followed planning permission. During 2019, it was also featured in a YouTube Video by the British group, the Sidemen. It appeared during their $10,000 vs. $100 Road Trip video.
