Oxford Footsteps: City Trails

By Kit Ward

Love exploring ancient cities? Love history? Then Oxford Footsteps: A History Trail is for you.
Walk the streets of one of England's most beautiful cities, while learning about its fascinating history along the way.

This guided walk through central Oxford will take you to twenty-four sites associated with notable events and people. Explore the city's rich past while visiting some of its most interesting places,
The trail begins at Oxford Castle and ends at Balliol College. Along the way, learn about the battles between townsfolk and scholars, join the debate about which of the colleges is really the oldest, and see where Alice in Wonderland and The Lord of the Rings were created. Your companions on the journey include kings, rebels, writers, scientists, and eccentric dons.
Experience Oxford in a new and distinctive way, and go exploring with Oxford Footsteps: A History Trail as your guide.

Features

• Twenty-four trail stops, with descriptions of significant events and people.
• Full route directions.
• Google Maps route map and directions available on-line and for download to your smartphone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kit Ward
• Release date: Jun 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781916469365

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

If you except the Colleges and Halls, the City of Oxford, in relation to building, is a very inconsiderable place, and no better than an ordinary market town.

The History and Antiquities of the Colleges and Halls in the University of Oxford, Anthony Wood (1674)

This Oxford I have no doubt is the finest City in the world — it is full of old Gothic buildings — Spires — towers — Quadrangles — Cloisters Groves &c. and is surrounded with more clear streams than ever I saw together.

John Keats, in a letter to his sister Fanny (1817)

And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,

She needs not June for beauty's heightening,

Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!

‘Thyrsis’, Matthew Arnold (1865)

I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

‘Going Back to School’, Max Beerbohm (1899)

Oxford in the imagination and in reality

There is a story that Adolf Hitler forbade the Luftwaffe from bombing Oxford because he intended to make it his British capital after the Nazi conquest. So even the tyrant who ordered that Paris should be levelled once the German Army withdrew (thankfully his general ignored the command) was smitten with the beauty and antiquity of Oxford.

It’s extraordinary, on the face of it, that a small town in the English Midlands should have risen to become the seat of one of the world’s leading universities. And it’s thanks to the University that Oxford has such a collection of magnificent buildings and such a rich history.

But as always, in the age of mass tourism, the visitor must manage their expectations. There is a psychological disorder known as Paris syndrome, in which a person visiting Paris experiences such a disappointment on finding the city not what they expected that a variety of unpleasant symptoms ensue. There may be a milder form of the malady relating to Oxford. So much traffic, so many tourists, such unappealing shops, and as for those dreary suburbs…

In fact, a common theme in all the many articles and books written about the place in the last fifty years is that Oxford is not what it used to be; that it has been blighted by poor planning, ugly modern architecture, and motor traffic. And that what Matthew Arnold identified as ‘the last enchantments of the Middle Age’ whispering from her towers’ have been banished.

The points about planning, modernism, and traffic are all true, yet still much beauty and enchantment remains to bewitch the visitor. Oxford is one of the most enjoyable and beguiling places in Britain to visit, especially for the lover of history and architecture. Which brings us to the content of this book.

As the title states, this is a history trail and while we will visit many significant buildings on the route, it is most definitely not an architectural tour. If it was, it would include many more buildings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The focus is on people, events, and anecdotes. But along the way, I will briefly quote the judgements of two outstanding architectural historians, Nikolaus Pevsner and Geoffrey Tyack. Of course, history and architecture are intertwined. Oxford’s history is encoded in its buildings, streets, and public spaces.

As far as the history is concerned, a trail cannot be either comprehensive or chronological. The trail may be linear, but the history isn’t. We will bob and weave from century to century, from era to era. What I’ve selected are some highlights from the thousand years and more history of the city. The idea is to give the reader a few episodes and anecdotes for each stop on the trail, with the primary aims of being both informative and entertaining.

It has to be said that all the best stories came from before the twentieth century. While Oxford was still making history after this, it seems it was no longer making anecdotes. Incidentally, the visitor will also be impressed with how well-behaved the Fellows and undergraduates seem to be in the present day compared to previous centuries.

The City

Oxford’s origins are obscure. The name derives from a river crossing, an oxen-ford. The precise location of this ford has been an ongoing subject of debate, but ever since an eighth-century stone causeway was discovered close to Folly Bridge (Stop 3 of the trail), the consensus is that this is the site of the original crossing.

The archaeological evidence indicates that Oxford came into existence as a significant settlement during the Anglo-Saxon age. Before that, this marshy stretch of ground between the Thames and the Cherwell rivers seems to have been sparely occupied in pre-Roman times and virtually ignored by the Romans themselves. Its early settlement owes everything to its position in relation to two major ports, London and Southampton. London was accessible via the Thames, and the town lay on the main north-south road to Southampton.

Naturally, there is a legendary origin story for Oxford. The fifteenth-century antiquary, John Rous, claimed that its founder was an ancient British king called Mempric, who lived in the time of the Hebrew prophet Samuel. Mempric was supposedly of Trojan descent and here Rous was taking his lead from an earlier chronicler, Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey’s book The History of the Kings of Britain ascribed the foundation of Britain to a band of Trojan exiles led by Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas.

Rous wrote that Mempric was the great-grandson of Brutus and founded not just but the university too, by inviting a group of Greek philosophers to create a school at Cricklade (actually about thirty miles west of Oxford in Wiltshire). According to Rous, Mempric was not admired: ‘no good thing is remembered but only that he begat an honest son and heir, and built this noble city’. He came to a bad end, being eaten by wolves at Wolvercote.

Leaving legend behind, the town which grew up during Anglo-Saxon times was centred on a nunnery founded by the local king Didan, with his daughter Frideswide as its abbess. We will learn more about Frideswide when we reach Stop 5 of the trail at Christ Church. Archaeological research indicates that the town was laid out in its medieval street pattern during the 890s, either by Aethelred, ealdorman of Mercia, or by his daughter-in-law Aethelflaed, ‘Lady of the Mercians’. This street plan of the medieval walled city, with its four roads from the north, south, east and west gates meeting at the crossroads of Carfax, is preserved today in Oxford’s historic centre.

The first documented reference to Oxford comes in the early tenth century, in the reign of Edward the Elder. By the middle of the eleventh century, its population had reached four thousand people, making it one of the largest in towns in England.

Around 1155, Henry II granted Oxford its first royal charter, recognizing privileges and customs already in existence. Henry’s charter formalized the position of Oxford as a trading town under the political and economic control of its Guild Merchants. With this charter, Oxford achieved a measure of freedom and independence equal to any city in the kingdom, except for London. And by 1272, it was paying more tax to the king than anywhere, except London and York. But that wealth, freedom, and independence would be gradually eroded with the coming of the University.

The University

Like the city itself, the origins of the University are obscure. In the words of R.W. Southern, historian and Fellow of Balliol College, the University ‘was not created; it emerged’. And the primary source of that emergence was the great religious houses of the medieval age, such as Osney Abbey, where scholar-monks studied, taught, and produced manuscripts. Another factor in Oxford’s favour was the relative ease of communications with the key cities of London and Southampton. It was also the largest inland town in southern England with a royal residence.

As for why a university was established in any part of England at all, the major factor was that in the 1160s, Henry II had forbidden English scholars from attending the University of Paris, at that time Europe’s largest and most prestigious, because of the Anglo-French wars. By the end of the twelfth century, the University’s reputation was established. Around 1190, Senatus, the prior of Worcester, described Oxford as ‘abounding in men skilled in mystic eloquence, bringing forth from their treasures things new and old’.

There were no colleges to begin with. Teaching may have taken place within the abbeys and priories at first. As the number of scholars grew, so too did the need to house and feed them. Academic halls providing meals and lodging gradually emerged. Initially, these were converted houses or inns, but they came to be purpose built. These were the forerunners of the colleges, but no teaching took place within them. And unlike the colleges, the halls were not endowed, i.e. they did not have land holdings from which they could derive an income. The halls also put scholars at the mercy of unscrupulous townsfolk.

The enmity between townsfolk and the scholars, the two poles referred to as Town and Gown, often erupted into violence. Gown regarded Town as exploitative, money-grabbing yokels, and Town saw Gown as often above the common law, representatives of the tyrannical power of church and state. The most notorious of these violent clashes occurred in 1355, as we shall learn at Stop 2 of the trail.

The first colleges were founded in the thirteenth century and were fundamentally different institutions from the halls. First, they had formal statues setting out the regulations, organization, and purpose. Second, as mentioned before, they had endowments guaranteeing a regular income. Third, they were intended to meet all the needs of scholars, whether eating, sleeping, or studying.

As for the rivalry as to which college can claim to be the oldest, the Encyclopaedia of Oxford summarizes the matter best: ‘University College had the first benefactor and — indirectly — founder, and the first property; Balliol the first actual site; Merton the first statutes’.

The visitor can safely leave the advocates of each of these three to argue where the true primacy lies and simply remember that these are the first three in what is now an ancient line of institutions. The medieval colleges look like fortresses, with their gatehouses, towers, thick walls, and crenelations. They were designed to keep townsfolk out and scholars in.

Each college has its own statutes, customs, idiosyncrasies, and lingo. To take the example of heads of colleges, at Magdalen and St John’s they are called the President, at Merton and All Souls the Warden, at Christ Church, the Dean, and at Balliol, the Master.

Each college is a self-governing institution but also forms a component of the corporate body of the University. It is common to bemoan the influence of Oxford and Cambridge, but it’s worth remembering that up until 1832, when Durham University was founded, there were only two universities in England: Oxford and Cambridge. It’s hardly surprising that so many notable figures in politics, religion, science, and literature through the centuries were educated here.

In total, there are thirty-nine colleges and it is not possible to cover them all in a book like this. I have chosen ten of the most significant and interesting as stops on the trail. The trail passes several other colleges, and I mention these in the route instructions.

All the colleges are open to visitors at some times, though opening hours are irregular for most. The most reliable is Christ Church, which also charges the highest ticket prices. Some colleges are free for visitors and others charge. For each college stop, I have provided a link for visitor and ticketing information, when available.

Understandably, colleges put their scholars first and will usually close during the examinations period or when they are holding private functions. And even when open, most of the buildings are off-limits. You will, however, be able to visit the hall, chapel, main quadrangles, and gardens in almost all cases.

If you’re a day tripper, visiting Oxford means taking pot luck and seeing which colleges are open when you get there. The Sheldonian Theatre may also close at short notice for ceremonies and other functions. The museums, however, are open on most days of the year. Again, I’ve provided links to visitor and ticketing information for these.

A note on routes and directions

For each stop on the trail, I have provided route instructions (in italics at the beginning of the chapter). These may not always provide the shortest route between two stops, but should be the simplest and (sometimes) the most scenic path.

For those who prefer sat-nav to written instructions, there is a route map with directions on Google Maps, available here. This route will differ in minor ways from the route described in