Oxford

Oxford, city (district), administrative and historic county of Oxfordshire, England. It is best known as the home of the University of Oxford.

Situated between the upper River Thames (known in Oxford as the Isis) and the Cherwell, just north of their confluence, the town was first occupied in Saxon times as a fording point. Earlier peoples had spurned the valley lowlands in favour of the drier uplands to the north and south. Oxford eventually became a Thames burg, built to defend the northern frontier of Wessex from Danish attack. The first written mention of the town was in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (912), when it was observed that Edward the Elder “held Lurdenbryg [London] and Oxnaford and all the lands pertaining thereto.” Except for the Saxon Romanesque tower of St. Michael’s Church in Cornmarket Street, little remains of the Saxon settlement at Oxford.

Robert d’Oilly was appointed the first Norman governor of Oxford and was responsible for building Oxford Castle, of which all that remains is the motte (mound) and the tower of the Church of St. George in the castle. The site today is occupied by the local prison. Robert also built Oxford’s first bridges (Magdalen, Folly, and Hythe). The Normans constructed a stone wall around the settlement. That wall enclosed an area of approximately 95 acres (38 hectares). Little now remains of it except for a few short sections, such as that standing in the grounds of New College. Established as a diocese in 1542, the first Oxford see was Osney Priory (destroyed), but in 1546 this designation was bestowed on St. Frideswide Priory, the “chapel” of Christ Church College and the smallest of all the cathedrals in England.

Oxford is known as the “City of Spires” because of its beautiful skyline of Gothic towers and steeples. Most of these belong to the university, which is the oldest in England. The University of Oxford’s buildings were mostly built in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. The earliest colleges of Oxford were University College (1249), Balliol (1263), and Merton (1264). Each college is built around two or three quadrangles, with a chapel, hall, library, and walled gardens. After the university was founded in the second half of the 12th century Oxford remained a market town, but this function declined in importance from the 13th century on. The town’s subsequent history became the history of the university, although there was always a certain antipathy between “town and gown.” This found its most violent expression in the Massacre of St. Scholastica’s Day in 1355.

In the English Civil Wars (1642–51), Oxford’s strategic importance made the city the Royalist headquarters to which King Charles I retired after his defeats at Edgehill, Newbury, and Naseby. In May 1646 the Parliamentary commander in chief, Lord Fairfax, besieged the city, which finally surrendered to him on June 24th. The town became an important stagecoach junction point, and a considerable number of inns from the stagecoach era still exist. During the 18th century a canal network linking Oxford with various parts of the country was also developed, and in 1835 the Great Western Railway from London to Bristol was begun.

In 1801 Oxford was still a small market town of about 12,000 people, many of whom depended on the university for a livelihood, but by the beginning of the 20th century printing and publishing industries had become firmly established in the town, and the manufacture of preserves (especially marmalade) was also important. By 1901 there were about 50,000 people in Oxford. The English industrial magnate William Morris (later Lord Nuffield) started a motor-car industry at Cowley, just outside the city; an assembly plant, together with associated heavy and electrical engineering enterprises, is the main industrial concern in the local economy. In 1926 a pressed-steel factory for car bodies was also set up in Cowley, and in 1929 the city’s boundaries were extended to include that industrial quarter. Oxford Polytechnic, one of England’s newest major institutions of higher education, was founded in 1970. Area 18 square miles (46 square km). Pop. (2001) 134,248; (2011) 151,906.