The Little Book of Oxfordshire E-Book

Paul Sullivan

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 311

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Did you know? - A trip to the Ashmolean for Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson led to the latter, under his nom de plume Lewis Carroll, immortalizing both Liddell and himself (as a dodo) in the Alice books. - A man was crushed beneath his own cart wheels in 1872, when his horse reared after meeting an elephant on the road from Oxford to Eynsham. - Despite Percy Bysshe Shelley being expelled from University College for writing the pamphlet 'The Necessity of Atheism', he is now its most celebrated alumnus. The Little Book of Oxfordshire is a funny, fact-packed compendium of the sort of frivolous, fantastic or simply strange information no one will want to be without. Here we find out about the most unusual crimes and punishments, eccentric inhabitants, and hundreds of interesting facts (plus some authentically bizarre bits of historical trivia). Combining essential details with little-known and entertaining information and quotations, this book is a highly engaging guide to where you are, what to look out for now you're here, and how on earth all this came to be.

Leseprobe

For Jan and Theo, sons and residents

First published 2012

This paperback edition published 2021

The History Press

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Cheltenham,

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www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Paul Sullivan, 2012, 2021

The right of Paul Sullivan to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7524 8243 9

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound by TJ International Limited, Padstow, Cornwall

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Founders, Keepers: The People Who Shaped Oxfordshire

2. Town and Village

3. Saints and Sinners

4. The Art of Being Famous

5. Crime and Punishment

6. Legends, Superstition and the Supernatural

7. The Working Life

8. University, College and School

9. Sport and Leisure

10. Food and Drink

11. Natural History

12. Oxfordshire at War

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to the following: Marlene Sullivan (aka Mam) for once again giving me the time, space and three meals a day that enabled this book to be written; Terry Sullivan (aka Dad) for being part of the above, and for taking photographs; Jay Sullivan, who saw less of me as a result of all the background reading, but was the best of company when we managed to grab time together; Cate Ludlow, Jennifer Briancourt and Beth Amphlett at The History Press, who gave the go ahead and wielded the editorial shears; and Geoff Morgan and Sarah Day, who probably don’t realise how encouraging they were.

INTRODUCTION

Oxfordshire is schizophrenic. Part of it likes to think of itself as the Cotswolds, another part is defined by the Chilterns, and the northern chunk calls itself Banburyshire. A large section to the south was wrested from Berkshire in 1974, and the county town’s University has often dominated matters – like a sergeant-major in a room full of new recruits – leading to the ‘Town and Gown’ divide. But in spite of this, the county has a pleasing visual cohesion, based on low, rolling hills and swathes of agricultural land, and well-manicured structures of golden limestone and Oxfordshire bricks. It has institutions that knit it together too, from RAF bases to morris dancing, and from Civil War battlefields to Aunt Sally championships.

As an educational gateway for royalty, politicians, artists and scientists, Oxford and its satellite villages have unfair riches of celebrity residents. The history of Oxford is in many ways the history of England; but when combined with tales from the outlying towns and villages, the brew is even richer.

In the interests of space, I have had to suppress my instinct to include every theme under the sun; and if any omission seems glaring, it is simply that the stories gathered here won their place on a first-come-first-served basis. The main purpose of this book is to entertain, through insightful, funny and sometimes disturbing stories. In doing so it covers as much of the county as possible, from gleaming high streets to muddy back lanes, giving equal emphasis to each of the five Local Authority areas of Cherwell, Oxford, South Oxfordshire, Vale of White Horse and West Oxfordshire. Wherever you find yourself in the county, there is a quirky tale in this book describing something weird that can be seen or experienced, or that happened, nearby. So, to whet the appetite:

On 6 July 1696, George Fuller of Chinnor sold his wife to Thomas Heath of Thame for 2¼d per lb, like meat on a market stall. The grand total was 29s ¼d (making her just over 11 stone, or 70 kilos). The buyer and his purchase enjoyed an illicit honeymoon at the White Hart in Benson, but were arrested after three months, fined, and forced to separate.

Grey’s Court, near Rotherfield, features a donkey-powered engine. Until well into the twentieth century, the patient beasts walked around a treadmill in the Tudor-built wheel house, operating a pulley that delivered water from a well.

Despite Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) being expelled from University College for writing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism, he is now its most celebrated alumnus. The memorial statue by Edward Onslow Ford (which was given to the College when the cemetery in Rome where Shelley was buried refused to have it) depicts him nude and dead on the shore at Viareggio, where he drowned.

A flock of Chastleton geese were turned to stone by a witch, when their keeper refused to give her charity. Their remains can still be seen today in the form of an unkempt monolith and a scatter of rocks known as the Goose Stones.

Students used to feed the deer in Magdalen College Grove with a traditional snack of port-soaked sugar cubes.

The A4130, on the edge of the village of Bix, became one of England’s first dual carriageways in 1937.

In 1853, a Cuddesdon resident suffering from goitre – swelling of the throat region due to a thyroid problem, usually indicative of iodine deficiency – asked for a dead man’s hand to be applied to the afflicted spot. Her father’s goitre had been cured by such a treatment, the swelling disappearing as the hand rotted away.

The steps and base of Leafield’s Market Cross are mediaeval, but the shaft and cross were added in 1873. The new erection was an act of thanksgiving, after the village survived a smallpox epidemic – giving the monument the none-too-pretty tag of the Smallpox Cross.

Alice Liddell saw the head and feet of a dodo on a trip to the Ashmolean with Charles Dodgson. The latter, suffering a stammer, instantly became nicknamed Do-do-Dodgson, and, under his nom de plume Lewis Carroll, immortalised both Liddell and himself (as a dodo) in the Alice books.

An invisible phantom coach travels aimlessly but noisily up the Turnpike Road at Aston Tirrold, and a similar thing happens in the courtyard of the Crown & Thistle Hotel in Abingdon.

The stone hounds surmounting the twin pillars at the gateway of Crowsley Park House, near Henley, are effigies of the dogs kept by former owner Sir Henry Baskerville. He was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1847, and his dogs are said to have been the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.

A man was crushed beneath his own cart wheels in 1872, when his horse reared after meeting an elephant on the road from Oxford to Eynsham.

In 1087, Saxon landowner Lady Elviva had to hand over Ambrosden to William the Conqueror’s butler, Hugh d’Ivry. In the eighteenth century, it passed to the wonderfully named Page-Turner family, who I immediately invoke as patrons of this book.

Paul SullivanOxford, 2012

1

FOUNDERS, KEEPERS:The People Who Shaped Oxfordshire

LEGENDARY BEGINNINGS

Memphric

Brutus, great-grandson of Aeneus (survivor of the Siege of Troy), founded Britain around 1120 BC. Amongst his retinue were Greek philosophers, who founded a school at Greeklade (Cricklade) on the banks of the Thames. This embryonic university later shifted to Oxford (Rydychen in the native tongue, Bellisitum in Latin), a city founded by Brutus’ great grandson Memphric. Memphric (aka Mempricius) was not the most inspirational of founding fathers, murdering his brother at a banquet, opting for tyranny, slaughter and sodomy, and eventually getting eaten by wolves.

The ancient and blood-stained seat of learning fell into decline after the demise of the house of Brutus in the sixth century BC. It was reduced to ashes by the Roman General Plautus in AD 50, and restored by Saxon King Alfred more than 800 years later. And, if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. This was the apocrypha and wishful thinking that passed for fact in days gone by. The date of the foundation of Oxford and its University is still unknown, and although there is a strong case to be made for Alfred the Great as founder, the city only enters the written historical record in the reign of his successor.

Emperor Domitian II

Roman Emperor Domitian II cropped up on a coin unearthed in northern France in 1990. However, there was no historical record of him and the sovereign was dismissed as a fake. But, in 2003, Domitian II was resurrected after a second coin was found at Chalgrove in Oxfordshire, part of a hoard now kept by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Domitian appears to have been a third-century AD soldier elevated to emperor by his followers in Gaul and Britain, but with no official recognition elsewhere. Minting coins was a way of stamping authority, literally, on your dominions. The depiction of the minor emperor shows him with a beard and a fiery crown – representing Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun.

King Ambrosius Aurelianus

According to local legend, Ambrosden is named after Romano-British King Ambrosius Aurelianus. He rallied the fractious Celtic tribes and succeeded in winning back the island from the invading Saxons in the first half of the fifth century AD. Treacherously poisoned, he passed the crown to his brother Uther Pendragon, who in turn handed it to his son – Ambrosius’ nephew – Arthur.

Ambrosius is from a period of British history that truly counts as a Dark Age: the chronicle-free transition from Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England. He seems to have existed, but the links to Arthur are wishful thinking; and Ambrosden itself is probably not named after the warlord king, but from Saxon elements meaning ‘Ambre’s Hill’.

King Alfred and Edward the Elder

It was once believed that King Alfred died at Faringdon’s Salutation Inn (presumably in the Smoke Room, given his reputation with cakes). When the historical rug was pulled from under this theory, it was claimed instead that Alfred’s son Edward the Elder died there. It seems churlish to deny this one as well, but there is no evidence to back it up.

Edward the Confessor

Edward the Confessor was born in Islip around AD 1005. A thousand years later, the village celebrated this fact with various events, including a ceremonial boat-burning and a visit from Channel 4’s Time Team. The TV archaeologists endeavoured to uncover the royal palace of Edward’s father King Ethelred, plus a twelfth-century chapel dedicated to the Confessor. The latter had been knocked down in the late eighteenth century, but a detailed drawing of the building had survived, and it would surely be a relatively simple feat to uncover foundations. However, the dig turned up nothing – no palace, no chapel. Some stone walls unearthed at a promising site turned out to be a seventeenth-century cesspit, with preserved faeces intact.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

King William and his family

After the Norman Conquest in 1066, Oxfordshire was up for grabs. Most of it went to King William’s relatives: Odo of Bayeux, Robert d’Oilly and William FitzOsbern. Odo owned vast swathes in the Headington, Bampton and Wootton regions; d’Oilly received Oxford and much more besides; while FitzOsbern went on to become Earl of Hereford, Gloucester, Worcester and Oxfordshire, one of England’s richest landowners and castle builders. During William’s absences, FitzOsbern was effectively in charge. When he died in battle in 1070, his son Robert de Breteuil took the next obvious step and rebelled against King William. The rebellion was crushed, and he was deprived of all his lands and titles. Oxfordshire was back on the feudal merry-go-round once again.

Elyas

One of the earliest architects of Oxford was a mason called Elyas. His name appears in various city accounts, and he would have been one of the most prominent and successful non-aristocrats of his age.

First mentioned in 1187 as receiving money for work on the new royal palace of Beaumont in Oxford, by the next year Elyas was being paid daily for the upkeep of the building, in addition to his other fees. He remained keeper of Beaumont until 1200, by which time he was a rich man, working for Kings Richard I and John at locations as diverse as Porchester, Hastings, Rochester, Pevensey, Marlborough, Westminster, the New Forest, the Tower of London, and again at Oxford, where he worked on the castle. Elyas also built and managed the royal siege engines that brought victory during the Siege of Nottingham in 1194.

Alice de la Pole

Ewelme School was founded 1404–75 by Alice de la Pole, granddaughter of poet Geoffrey Chaucer. It was built with profits from the wool trade of East Anglia, where Alice raked it in as Duchess of Suffolk. It is the oldest council-run school in Britain.

Alice also built Ewelme’s St Mary’s Church, and almshouses which are officially called ‘The Two Chaplains and Thirteen Poor Men of Ewelme in the County of Oxford’. The houses are still run as a charity by Ewelme Trust. The founder, and her father Thomas Chaucer, are buried in the church. Hers is an impressive effigy-topped tomb, with a semi-concealed ‘cadaver’ at its base – a life-sized statue of the departed in mid-rot, all skin and bones, all glory faded. This was a humble reminder to the great and good that they were, ultimately, destined for dust and decay like everyone else.

Broughton Castle.

The Fiennes

The Fiennes dynasty, owners of Broughton Castle, very nearly came unstuck in the Civil War when William Fiennes supported the Parliamentarian cause, raising troops for the indecisive Battle of Edgehill in 1642. Broughton was subsequently commandeered by Charles I’s men, and went into a steep decline afterwards. By the nineteenth century the castle was falling down, until Frederick Fiennes (Lord Saye and Sele) employed architect George Gilbert Scott to carry out drastic renovation.

Broughton Castle has been used as a location in many films and TV shows, including The Madness of King George (1994), Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Jane Eyre (2011).

Thomas Wyatt

In a bid to become royal favourite, Thomas Wyatt led an abortive rebellion in 1554 to oust Queen Mary I and install her sister Elizabeth on the throne. The latter was promptly arrested and taken to Woodstock for genteel imprisonment. Embarrassingly, Woodstock Manor was too dilapidated to accommodate her, and she was locked in the Gatehouse instead.

Francis Knollys

Francis Knollys (d. 1596) was a leading political figure under Tudor monarchs Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I, having evaded Catholic Mary I by going into exile. He lived at Grey’s Court near Rotherfield Greys, whose church has an eye-popping monument depicting Francis, his wife (who was a cousin of Henry VIII’s second wife Anne Boleyn), and fourteen of his children. His eldest son, another Francis, was MP for Oxford in the late sixteenth century, and gained much of his wealth through State-sanctioned piracy, like his good friend Sir Francis Drake. Knolly’s heraldic symbol, a black elephant, decorates the Oxford coat of arms in the company of a green beaver, a lion, and the eponymous ox. MP for Reading until his death at the age of ninety in 1648, he was described by the Governor of Reading, Sir Arthur Aston, as ‘the ancientest Parliament man in England’.

John Radcliffe

John Radcliffe never saw the Radcliffe Camera. The Oxford landmark was funded with money bequeathed by him in 1714 to house a medical library (Radcliffe being the physician who opened the city’s first infirmary, and after whom the modern John Radcliffe Hospital is named). The Camera was built by James Gibbs between 1737 and 1749, after he triumphed against Nicholas Hawksmoor for the honour. It is the most iconic – and photographed – structure in the city, at the heart of the cobbled Radcliffe Square, with Colleges and University cathedral glowing all around in Cotswold stone.

The Radcliffe Camera and Library.

Radcliffe Square.

HIGH SHERIFF OF OXFORDSHIRE

Edwin

Sheriffs – shire-reeves – originated as the King’s direct representatives in the shires, and were responsible for squeezing every last penny of taxation from the overburdened populace, and for upholding law and order. The first named High Sheriff of Oxfordshire was the Saxon Edwin, who steered the county from the 1066 conquest through to Domesday in 1086. Normans held the title from then on.

Falkes de Breauté

Notable High Sheriffs include the splendidly named Manasser Arsick (1160–2), and Falkes de Breauté (1215–23). Falkes was a loyal defender of Kings John and Henry III, and his heraldic symbol was a griffin. His London residence was called Falke’s Hall, which became Fawkes Hall, then Foxhall, Fauxhall and, finally, Vauxhall. Vauxhall cars began production at Vauxhall Ironworks, London, in 1903, and in a time-defying piece of symbolism, the company still uses Falkes de Breauté’s griffin as its heraldic badge.

Thomas Chaucer

Between 1248 and 1566, the High Sheriff of Oxfordshire title was held jointly with that of High Sheriff of Berkshire. Amongst its notable holders was Thomas Chaucer (in office 1400–3), son of famed poet Geoffrey. He owned the manors of Ewelme and Woodstock, and carried impressive additional titles such as Speaker of the House of Commons; Chief Butler for England; Constable of Wallingford Castle; Steward of the Honours of Wallingford, St Valery and the Chiltern Hundreds; and MP for Oxfordshire (1400–31). He was active at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, served as a royal householder to Henry V, and was a member of the royal council under Henry VI. He died fabulously wealthy at Ewelme on 18 November 1434, aged sixty-seven. But in spite of all this, he was still accosted in the street with: ‘Hey, didn’t your dad write The Canterbury Tales?’

Richard Taverner

Richard Taverner, who produced an English translation of the Bible, was High Sheriff in 1569. As a young man, he had read Tyndale’s outlawed English Bible in Oxford, and was arrested for doing so; but the religious seeds were sown. Prior to being Sheriff he was a lay preacher, renowned for his flowery speeches. He once told a congregation at St Mary’s in Oxford: ‘I have brought you some fine biscuits baked in the oven of charity, carefully conserved for the chickens of the church, the sparrows of the spirit, and the sweet swallows of salvation.’

Sir Anthony Cope

Sir Anthony Cope was Sheriff three times between 1581 and 1603. A Protestant zealot, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for a month in 1587 when, as MP for Banbury, he presented the Speaker of the Commons with a Puritan version of the Book of Common Prayer and a Bill attacking Church law. This served him well when the ecclesiastical tide turned: he was knighted by Elizabeth I in 1590 and became a baronet under James I in 1611. (Baronets were invented by James I to raise money: title holders had to fork out for the honour.) Cope died magnificently wealthy in 1614, aged sixty-six, and was buried on his estate at Hanwell.

Hanwell Castle.

Female High Sheriffs

The first female High Sheriff of Oxfordshire was Isabella Juliet Hutchinson in 1984, and women have been elected regularly ever since, including Marie-Jane Barnett in 2010 and Penelope Glen in 2011.

BLENHEIM PALACE AND ITS RESIDENTS

Dukes and Duchesses of Marlborough

Blenheim Palace in the parish of Bladon was begun by John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, in 1705 and completed in 1724 – a gift ‘from the nation’ for his pre-eminent role in securing victory in Bavaria at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. The battle was a turning point in the Spanish War of Succession – even though it had another ten years to run – in which England was defending Habsburg Emperor Leopold’s HQ at Vienna against the forces of Louis XIV of France. Thirty thousand French troops died at Blenheim, and the seemingly inexorable advance of a Roman Empire-style French Europe was effectively halted on that day. Marlborough went on to enjoy other famous victories at Ramillies in 1706, Oudenarde in 1708 and Malplaquet in 1709, by which time he was national hero bar none.

Queen Anne was a close friend to Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough – but the ‘gift from the nation’ became increasingly grudging when the two women fell out. Their last clash occurred in 1711, after which Anne cancelled the Blenheim funds.

Things had never run smoothly on the enormous building site (where the ruins of Woodstock Palace had been swept away on the whim of the Duchess). The Duke had ignored the credentials of Christopher Wren, the obvious man for the job of building the palace, and opted for the playwright John Vanbrugh, an untrained architect who had recently worked with Nicholas Hawksmoor on Harewood House in Yorkshire. Going solo, Vanbrugh’s designs were criticised from the outset, and used as a lever in Parliament to stem the flow of cash. The Duchess had disapproved of the architect from the start; but now she hated him.

With the money dried up, the royals disowning them and the whole project turning into a white elephant, the Churchills were forced into exile in 1714, owing the builders a huge sum. It was the year the Spanish War of Succession finished, ironically, and Marlborough’s star should have been at its zenith.

Royal palace of Woodstock.

Once Queen Anne was underground and George I was installed, the Marlboroughs were back in favour. Vanbrugh was sacked and Hawksmoor finished Blenheim, whose construction was now financed entirely by the Duke. In 1725, Vanbrugh visited the recently completed palace as a member of the public, but was turned away at the gate.

Blenheim – one of largest houses in the country – is the only non-royal or Church-related house to bear the title ‘Palace’. Since 1987 it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its vast interiors and idiosyncratic gardens, follies, maze and other tourist-pleasers, make it the county’s main hotspot outside Oxford itself.

Lord Robert Spencer

As reported in Jackson’s Oxford Journal, on 3 April 1762:

… Lord Robert Spencer, youngest brother to his Grace the Duke of Marlborough, most providentially escaped being suffocated, and burnt in his Bed, at Blenheim House in this County. His Lordship waking suddenly, almost Two o’clock in the Morning, found the Curtains of his Bed, the Hangings of the Room, a Chest of Drawers, and other Pieces of Furniture in Flames, and the room filled with Smoak … The Fire was happily extinguished, without spreading any further. … A Powder Flask had taken Fire, the explosion of which most probably first disturbed his Lordship. This Accident cannot be accounted for, unless a Spark might have fallen from the Candle among the Linen, while the Servant was putting it up in the Drawers, the Evening before.

Winston Churchill

Blenheim’s most famous son is Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, who shares a grave with his wife Clementine in St Martin’s churchyard, Bladon. Amongst his many claims to fame, he is the only prime minister to have received the Nobel Prize for Literature (‘History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it’), and to have been made an honorary citizen of the USA. Legend says that he was born in a toilet at Blenheim: the Duchess had gone into labour early during an evening dance, having suffered a fall during the afternoon shooting party. Winston’s words on the subject were: ‘Although present on the occasion, I have no clear recollection of the event.’

Amongst Churchill’s less successful projects were the ill-fated Gallipoli Campaign in the First World War (while he was First Lord of the Admiralty), and his opposition to the abdication of national liability Edward VIII in 1936. More successfully, he was a war correspondent, reporting from the heart of conflict in such diverse 1890s’ arenas as Cuba (in which he acquired his lifelong taste for Havana cigars), the Indian Siege of Malakand, the Boer War in South Africa and the re-conquest of Sudan. While in South Africa he was imprisoned as a POW, and escaped via a 480km trek to Portuguese-held Delagoa Bay. Undeterred, he later returned to the fray and was instrumental in key victories at Pretoria. He wrote various books and articles detailing his heroic experiences. And all this before entering Parliament for the first time in 1900!

Always larger than life and supremely self-confident, Churchill naturally ran up against a few detractors:

Lady Nancy Astor: If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee.

Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I would drink it.

But on the whole, the admirers outnumbered them:

Female fan admiring new sculpture of Winston: Mr Churchill, I want you to know that I got up at dawn and drove a hundred miles for the unveiling of your bust.

Churchill: Madam, I want you to know that I would happily reciprocate the honour.

Churchill’s death on 30 January 1965 was greeted by national mourning (‘I am ready to meet my maker. Whether my maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter’). His body was taken to Hanborough railway station by a locomotive called, appropriately enough, Winston Churchill, and the funeral procession continued by road to Bladon.

Alva Vanderbilt

The county’s most spectacular arranged marriage occurred in 1896. Fabulously rich American heiress, Alva Vanderbilt, noted the down-at-heel aspect of Blenheim Palace and contacted the current owner, Charles, 9th Duke of Marlborough.

Alva had just the thing to reverse Marlborough’s failing fortunes: her daughter Consuelo. The Duke agreed, negotiating a £2.5 million dowry; but Consuelo had set her heart on another man. Alva, threatening to murder her daughter’s lover, locked Consuelo in her room before the wedding, fearing an elopement.

The marriage took place in New York, and afterwards the Duke declared that he hated all things non-British, would never return to America, and loved another woman. Blenheim was bailed out, but the relationship was a non-starter; and, after their divorce in 1921, the Duke married another American woman, a friend of Consuelo’s. The former Duchess, having shocked society in 1906 by walking out on her husband, lived to see her son John become 10th Duke of Marlborough. She died in 1964.

KINGS AND QUEENS

The sixth and seventh-century Kings of Mercia had a court at Benson – Oxfordshire being on their war-torn border with Wessex.

King Cynegils was baptised at Dorchester-on-Thames, and his son Cwichelm had a similar encounter with holy water in AD 636, dying in the same year.

Edwold, brother of East Anglian King Edmund, turned down the offer of the crown when Edmund was murdered in AD 869, retiring instead to the embryonic monastic community at Dorchester.

The Market Cross, Woodstock.

Ethelred I had a royal court at Woodstock, 865–71.

Ethelred’s son, Alfred the Great (reigned 871–99), may have founded Oxford University. He was born at Wantage, and is said to have convened one of the first English parliaments at Shifford.

Alfred’s son, Edward the Elder (reigned 899–924), is the first king with verifiable links to Oxford. His brother and his son, Kings Ethelward and Athelstan, lived and studied here too.

Ethelred II ‘the Unready’ (968–1013) held councils at Oxford, Woodstock and Eynsham, and had further palaces at Islip and Headington.

Danish King Sweyn burned down Oxford during the single year of his reign in England in 1013 (a feat which the Danes repeated in 1032).

Edmund II (Ironside) was murdered at Oxford in 1016 after a seven-month reign.

Canute, son of King Sweyn, resided in Oxford and held many councils there during his reign, 1016–35.

Harold I (Harefoot) was crowned in Oxford in 1035.

Edward the Confessor (reigned 1042–66) was born at Islip in 1004.

William the Conqueror stormed Oxford in 1067.

Henry I (d. 1135), the Conqueror’s son, earned the nickname Beauclerc through his patronage of Oxford. He founded Beaumont Palace here and rebuilt the palace at Woodstock, installing a walled park and menagerie. These two sites were the seats of many monarchs to come.

King Stephen (d. 1154) and his niece Matilda (d. 1141) planned and staged much of their civil warring in Oxford in the twelfth century.

Both King Richard I and King John were born at Beaumont in the mid-twelfth century.

Sometime residents of Beaumont and/or Woodstock include Henry II (d. 1189), Henry III (d. 1272) and Edward I (d. 1307). The latter’s son Edmund was born at Woodstock in 1301, as was Edward the Black Prince, son of Edward III, in 1330, and his brother Thomas ‘of Woodstock’ in 1355.

Henry III spent Christmas at Osney Abbey in 1222 ‘with great revelling mirth’.

Most monarchs from Henry II onwards were benefactors of the University. Edward III (reigned 1327–77) was a great patron, setting the trend.

Richard II (reigned 1377–99) held Christmas and other festivities at Woodstock, and Henry IV (d. 1413) was based here, and at Beaumont, too. His son Henry V (d. 1422) was a student at Queen’s College.

Edward IV (1442–70) lived in the palace at Langley, with its access to the royal hunting grounds of Wychwood Forest. He assumed the title Protector of the University of Oxford.

Richard III (reigned 1483–5) held courts at Magdalen College prior to the winter of his discontent.

Henry VII (d. 1509) favoured Woodstock Palace and its hunting grounds, and his son Arthur was born here. His successor, Henry VIII (reigned 1509–47), favoured London, but was forced to live at Abingdon in 1518 to avoid the ‘sweating sickness’. Henry also used the palace at Woodstock, founded Christ Church College, and made Oxford the centre of one of six new Bishoprics.

Mary I’s association with Oxford is chiefly through the martyrdom of unrepentantly non-Catholic Bishops Ridley and Cranmer, 1555/6.

Elizabeth I was kept under house arrest at Woodstock while her sister Mary reigned, and, as queen (1558–1603), she lived briefly at Rycote. She was very fond of Oxford and its University.

James I moved to Oxford to avoid the London plague in 1603, and his son, Charles I, famously chose Oxford as his base during the ill-starred wars that ended with his beheading in 1649. He also resided at Woodstock and Rycote.

Charles II avoided the London plague at Oxford 1665–6.

James II (deposed 1688) used Oxford as the base for his resurgent Catholicism, University College being used for Roman Catholic Mass.

William III held court at Henley-on-Thames prior to taking up the throne in 1689. He enjoyed support in the county, notably during his stay at Burford.

Queen Anne was a frequent visitor to Oxford, and it was she who gave the ancient royal estate at Woodstock to the Dukes of Marlborough in 1704.

The Georgian era had a rocky start in Oxfordshire, much of the county supporting the Stuart claim to the throne. The Hanoverians’ main mark on the county is the statue of Queen Caroline at Queen’s College. She was the wife of George II (reigned 1727–60) and benefactress of the College.

George III’s father, Frederick, Prince of Wales, visited Wroxton Abbey in 1739; an obelisk in its park commemorates the fact. It also notes visits from George IV in the early nineteenth century.

George III (reigned 1760–1820) was a regular visitor to Nuneham Park, and rekindled the royal connection with Oxford.

Queen Victoria (reigned 1837–1901) was frequently wined and dined in the county.

WHO’S IN CHARGE NOW?

When taxation finally made it to the upper echelons of society, county councils and the likes of the National Trust purchased many large estates and houses from their cash-strapped owners. Various rich celebrities have moved in too. The Colleges of Oxford University still own much of the city and county, though, and a few other rich landlords battle on. The Dukes of Marlborough still own Blenheim, and Lord and Lady Saye and Sele rule the roost at Broughton Castle.

But the strangest roost is at Faringdon House, where the pigeons are dyed bright colours. ‘Mistrust a man who never has an occasional flash of silliness,’ said the Right Honourable Sir Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, aka the 14th Lord Berners (1883–1950), minor composer, novelist and painter, and owner of Faringdon House. He is responsible for the extant tradition of pigeon-dyeing. He was also fond of erecting signs along the lines of: ‘Do not throw stones at this notice’ and ‘Mangling done here’ – the latter inscribed on a plaque on the door of Faringdon House.

Berners’ output includes the immortal verse:

Red Roses blow but thrice a year,

In June, July or May:

But owners of Red Noses

Can blow them every day.

The county’s most infamous rich resident was Robert Maxwell, the newspaper magnate found guilty of stealing money from pension fund schemes. Maxwell died in 1991 in suspicious circumstances, whilst yachting off the Canary Islands. The official verdict of accidental death has been countered by theories of murder and suicide. He lived at Headington Hill Hall, although he never actually owned it. It was leased from Oxford City Council, and dubbed the most expensive council house in the world. The site is now occupied by Oxford Brookes University. Maxwell is buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Kiddington Hall, built in 1673, had its first makeover when Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown laid out new gardens in the mid-eighteenth century. A hundred years later, the architect Charles Barry controversially remodelled the entire hall, leaving no trace of the original exterior. In the 1950s, the hall was bought by the Robson family, founders of chartered accountancy firm Robson Rhodes. But in 2009 the owner put it, and the larger Kiddington estate (more than 1,600 acres, largely the village of Nether Kiddington, including its eighteen houses and kindergarten, and another twenty-odd buildings), on the market for £42 million. After much media speculation, the hall section of the portfolio was bought in 2010 by heiress Jemima Goldsmith.

Glympton House was bought by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia’s nephew Prince Bandar, Saudi Ambassador to the US, in 1992. The £8 million sale price was inflated by the £40 million that needed spending on renovation and security (such as bullet-proof glass). Prince Bandar has since bought another 500 acres of surrounding land.

But it’s not all about money and ownership. Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham, founded the country’s first co-operative shop. He was born in Shrivenham and educated at Merton College. The groundbreaking shop opened in 1794 at Mongewell, selling locally produced bacon, cheese and other basics at rock-bottom, no-middle-man prices. Shoppers were able to save an estimated 21 per cent.

Barrington went on to publish utopian plans for co-operative and social life, ‘far exceeding in variety and thoroughness any in the minds of persons now living’, as social commentator George Jacob wrote, sixty years after the co-op king’s death. He added:

Co-operation was born of the feeling that unmitigated competition is at best but social war; and though war has its great conquests, its pomps, its bards, its proud associations and heroic memories, there is murder in its march; and humanity and genius were things to blush for, if progress cannot be accomplished by some nobler means. What an enduring truce is to war, co-operation is to the never-ceasing conflict between capital and labour. It is the peace of industry.

And it all started in Mongewell, better known today for being one of the many scenic locations traversed by the Ridgeway long-distance footpath.

2

TOWN AND VILLAGE

ANCIENT AND RUINED

Bones

Local legend says that, during a storm, a man rode his horse across Blewburton Hill between Aston Upthorpe and Blewbury. There was an enormous clap of thunder, and rider and horse simply disappeared, hammered into the ground by the thunderbolt. The tale may be linked to the remains of ten 3,000-year-old horses discovered during archaeological excavations at the Iron Age site in the 1940s. They were probably bludgeoned and buried here to appease the gods, and to defend the walls in the form of vengeful spirits.

This notion of an undead defence force was widespread. The remains of a dog and a man, discovered in the foundations of a Romano-British wall at the Churchill kilns near Headington in Oxford, are a case in point. The dog was supposed to take ghostly bites at the legs of would-be intruders, while the wraith of the man threw a few sticks during history’s quieter periods.

Roman villa

In 1812, the remains of a Roman villa were discovered at North Leigh near Witney. At the time of its occupation, the fourth-century villa had four bath suites, sixteen mosaic floors and eleven rooms with under-floor heating, all of which were abandoned when the Romans withdrew from Britain 100 years later.

News of the archaeological sensation spread quickly, and souvenir hunters were ruthless. A few years after its discovery, two of the three surviving mosaic floors had been stolen tile by tile. Site owner, the Duke of Marlborough, erected a damage-limitation shed over the surviving one, and it can still be seen in its fragmentary glory, under the custodianship of English Heritage. In its heyday, it would have been one of the largest Roman villas on the island.

Hampton Gay Manor