The two-cell timber Oxford Lock-up (Former), Oxford, was built in 1879 and is significant as a remnant of law enforcement and policing in the town that links back to colonial settlement in North Canterbury. The Oxford Lock-up (Former) is the third lock-up to have been at the West Oxford Police Station, the first two having blown away in severe gales. The Oxford Lock-up (Former), relocated to its present position at 72 Main Street, is representative of the two-cell lock-ups constructed in small towns throughout New Zealand. Although relocated, it has the ability to recreate the atmosphere of the time when the Lock-up was in use.

Although there was variation in the types of design and lay-out for Victorian and Edwardian lock-ups, there are certain standard features common to almost all. Oxford Lock-up (Former) is typical of what was built in New Zealand at this time and its standard features include a rectangular plan, a hipped roof of corrugated iron, exterior weatherboards, perforated steel plates above each cell door, heavily constructed doors and an inspection holes with a cover. The Oxford Lock-up is a two-cell variation. Its floor plan is only 3.6 metres square, and the interior steel plates and bars gives an impression of what it must have been like to be locked up in a confined space without any fenestration.

The Oxford Lock-up functioned, like most lock-ups associated with police stations, as a secure place to hold offenders for a short period until either their release or relocation to long-term incarceration in a gaol. Frequently drunks were put in the lock-up to sober up, and wayward juveniles from the Burnham Industrial School were often held there in the early twentieth century. Its most notorious prisoner was Charles Butler, who was later found guilty of the horrific murder of a young woman at View Hill in 1917. After more than three decades being used as a storage shed since the 1950s, the building was in a dilapidated condition when it was purchased in 1996 by the Keep Oxford Beautiful Committee. In 1998 the Oxford Lock-up building was shifted to a temporary site for restoration, and once this was completed it was resited to its present position on Main Street in January 2002 where it is open to the public to view as an historic building.