Oxford is a very strange place

I WAS UP in Oxford over the weekend in a place called Wolvercote near the canals, and naturally I took my digicamera with me. As I do.

If anyone who isn’t from the UK can make sense of these two photographs below, would you care to tell me, because something is going on in Oxford and I cannae figure it out, being from Aberdeen in Scotland?  Like these studs and these so-called “public inconveniences?” ♣