Oxford
Oxford is a cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town.
The city is home to the University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world; it has buildings in every style of English architecture since late Anglo-Saxon. Oxford's industries include motor manufacturing, education, publishing, science, and information technologies.
Founded in the 8th century, it was granted city status in 1542. The city is located at the confluence of the rivers Thames and Cherwell. It had a population of in. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol.
History
The history of Oxford in England dates back to its original settlement in the Saxon period. The name “Oxford” comes from the Old English Oxenaforda, meaning “ford of the oxen,” referring to a shallow crossing in the river where oxen could pass. The town was of strategic significance, because of the ford and the town's controlling location on the upper reaches of the River Thames at its confluence with the River Cherwell.After the Norman Conquest in 1066, Norman lord Robert D’Oyly built Oxford Castle in 1071 to secure control of the area. The town grew in national importance during the early Norman period.
Teaching began in the 11th century and by the late 12th century the town was home to the fledgling University of Oxford. Tensions sometimes erupted between the scholastic community and the town: in 1209, after a townsperson hanged two scholars for an alleged murder, a number of Oxford academics fled and founded Cambridge University. Town-and-gown conflicts continued, culminating in the St. Scholastica Day Riot of 1355 – a feuding that lasted days and left around 93 students and townspeople dead.
Oxford was besieged during The Anarchy in 1142. During the Middle Ages, Oxford had an important Jewish community, of which David of Oxford and his wife Licoricia of Winchester were prominent members. The university rose to dominate the town.
A heavily ecclesiastical town, Oxford was greatly affected by the changes of the English Reformation. Oxford’s ecclesiastical institutions were dismantled — the city’s monasteries were closed in the 1530s. Religious strife touched Oxford directly during the Marian persecution: the Oxford Martyrs were tried for heresy here. Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burned at the stake in Oxford in October 1555, and the former Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was executed in March 1556. A Victorian-era monument, the Martyrs’ Memorial in St Giles’, now commemorates these events.
Oxford was elevated from town to city status in 1542 when the Diocese of Oxford was created – Christ Church college chapel was made a cathedral, officially granting Oxford its city privileges.
During the English Civil War Charles I made Oxford his de facto capital : he moved his court to Oxford, using the city as his headquarters after being expelled from London.
The city began to grow industrially during the 19th century, and had an industrial boom in the early 20th century. Traditional industries included brewing and publishing – Oxford University Press and other print houses were major employers by the 19th century. In 1910 entrepreneur William Morris founded a motor car business in Oxford, opening an assembly plant at Cowley.
The city’s population and economy grew with this industrial boom, diversifying beyond the university.
Geography
Physical
Location
Oxford's latitude and longitude are, with Ordnance Survey . Oxford is north-west of Reading, north-east of Swindon, east of Cheltenham, east of Gloucester, south-west of Milton Keynes, south-east of Evesham, south-east of Worcester, south of Rugby and west-north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through Oxford and meet south of the city centre. These rivers and their flood plains constrain the size of the city centre.Climate
Oxford has a maritime temperate climate. Precipitation is uniformly distributed throughout the year and is provided mostly by weather systems that arrive from the Atlantic. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Oxford was on 24 December 1860. The highest temperature ever recorded in Oxford is on 19 July 2022. The average conditions below are from the Radcliffe Meteorological Station. It has the longest series of temperature and rainfall records for one site in Britain. These records are continuous from January 1815. Irregular observations of rainfall, cloud cover, and temperature exist since 1767.The driest year on record was 1788, with of rainfall. The wettest year was 2012, with. The wettest month on record was September 1774, with a total fall of. The warmest month on record is July 1983, with an average of and the coldest is January 1963, with an average of. The warmest year on record is 2014, with an average of and the coldest is 1879, with a mean temperature of. The sunniest month on record is May 2020, with 331.7 hours and December 1890 is the least sunny, with 5.0 hours. The greatest one-day rainfall occurred on 10 July 1968, with a total of. The greatest known snow depth was in February 1888.
Districts
The city centre
The city centre is relatively small and is centred on Carfax, a crossroads which forms the junction of Cornmarket Street, Queen Street, St Aldate's and the High Street. Cornmarket Street and Queen Street are home to Oxford's chain stores, as well as a small number of independent retailers, one of the longest established of which was Boswell's, founded in 1738. The store closed in 2020. St Aldate's has few shops but several local government buildings, including the town hall, the city police station and local council offices. The High is the longest of the four streets and has a number of independent and high-end chain stores, but mostly university and college buildings. The historic buildings mean the area is often used by film and TV crews.Suburbs
Aside from the city centre, there are several suburbs and neighbourhoods within the borders of the city of Oxford, including:- Barton
- Blackbird Leys
- Cowley
- * Temple Cowley
- Iffley
- * Littlemore
- * Rose Hill
- Cutteslowe
- Headington
- * New Marston
- Jericho
- North Oxford
- * Park Town
- * Norham Manor
- * Walton Manor
- Osney
- Risinghurst
- Summertown
- * Sunnymead
- * Waterways
- Wolvercote
Green belt
The vast majority of the area covered is outside of the city, but there are some green spaces within that which are covered by the designation, such as much of the Thames and river Cherwell flood-meadows, and the village of Binsey, along with several smaller portions on the fringes. Other landscape features and places of interest covered include Cutteslowe Park and the mini railway attraction, the University Parks, Hogacre Common Eco Park, numerous sports grounds, Aston's Eyot, St Margaret's Church and well, and Wolvercote Common and community orchard.
Governance
There are two tiers of local government covering Oxford, at district and county level: Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council. From 1889 to 1974 the city of Oxford was a county borough, independent from the county council. Oxford City Council meets at the Town Hall on the street called St Aldate's in the city centre. The current building was completed in 1897, on a site which had been occupied by Oxford's guildhall since the 13th century.Most of Oxford is an unparished area, but there are four civil parishes within the city's boundaries: Blackbird Leys, Littlemore, Old Marston, and Risinghurst and Sandhills.