Oxfordshire

V

Places of Interest

Oxford is the main tourism centre. The colleges of the university are the main attraction, but Oxford also has many outstanding museums, as well as parks and the botanic gardens beside Magdalen Bridge. Many visitors take a boat or punt on the Isis (as the Thames has been called in Oxford since the 14th century). Some of the finest architecture in England is to be seen in the city, many of whose churches, colleges, and other important buildings are of Cotswold stone. This honey-coloured stone, much used throughout the county, has a soft, warm glow, especially remarkable at sunset. The Ashmolean Museum, opened in 1683, is the oldest public museum in England. In addition to its great art collection, it houses the Museum of the History of Science, the finest collection of early astronomical, mathematical, and optical instruments in the world. The Pitt Rivers Museum (1884), housed behind the University Museum of Natural History, is a museum of ethnology and prehistory containing artefacts from around the world and from all historical periods. The original collection, comprising around 14,000 items, was bequeathed to Oxford University by General Pitt-Rivers in 1883, and with the continuing acquisition of new objects, the collection now includes over a million items.

The city has given rise to a number of expressions: an “Oxford accent”, these days often used to denote an affected manner of speaking; “Oxford bags”, trousers with very wide legs, fashionable among undergraduates in the 1920s and 1930s; “Oxford marmalade”, first made locally in the 1870s by Mrs Cooper, wife of an Oxford grocer.

The aid agency Oxfam was set up in the city in 1942 by a group of local people to help starving people in German-occupied countries affected by the British wartime trade embargo. Originally called the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, it has developed into one of the world's leading non-governmental aid agencies, channelling support these days to people in the developing world. It became known as Oxfam and this name was adopted officially in 1965.

Oxford is used as a touring base for the area. The Cotswolds are close by. Also near Oxford is Blenheim Palace, home of the dukes of Marlborough. The manor of Woodstock, enclosed in the 12th century as a deer park and royal hunting ground, was presented to John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and his heirs in perpetuity by the nation in gratitude for his famous victory over the French in 1704. The mansion was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh; the gardens were originally laid out by Henry Wise and later re-landscaped by Capability Brown. Sir Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim and is buried at Bladon nearby. Other tourism centres include the attractive Cotswold wool towns of Burford and Chipping Norton, and the Vale of the White Horse between Wantage and Faringdon. Banbury, immortalized in the old nursery rhyme “Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross”, was once famous for its cakes and ale.

Boating on the Thames is not just popular in Oxford. At Henley-on-Thames there is a straight stretch of river just over 2 km (1.2 mi), ideal for rowing races. The Henley Royal Regatta, founded in 1839, takes place annually in early July.

VI

Economy

For centuries wool was the mainstay of the county, together with sheep and arable farming. The town of Witney has long been famous for blankets. Fruit is grown in the Vale of the White Horse and on the Downs, and preserves are manufactured. Oxfordshire is the most important centre for high-technology research and development and manufacturing in the United Kingdom outside London. Many high-tech companies are located in the county, attracted by the pool of skilled labour and research traditions associated with the University of Oxford and Harwell. About 12 per cent of Oxfordshire's workforce are graduates—the highest percentage in the country. The atomic energy research establishment at Harwell, established in 1946 on a disused airfield south of the city, marked the first stage in the British atomic energy research programme. It subsequently produced plutonium for the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, and during the 1970s and 1980s widened its scope into more general areas of high-tech research, including lasers. It was a major centre for irradiating silicon chips until the last of its nuclear reactors closed down in the late 1980s. Oxfordshire is also the UK centre of the performance car industry. The motor industry began locally when the Morris Car Company was set up at Cowley, a suburb of Oxford, in 1912. The Morris Oxford and the Morris Cowley were early models; after World War II came the Morris Minor and the Mini. Abingdon was the home of the famed MG sports car.

The county is the largest centre of the printing and publishing sector in the United Kingdom outside London. Printing and publishing have been carried out in Oxfordshire since the end of the 15th century. A landmark was the publication in 1884-1933 by the Oxford University Press of the 11-volume The Oxford English Dictionary.

VII

History

Artefacts from the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods have been recovered along the Thames and elsewhere. Some 32 km (20 mi) south-west of Oxford, at Uffington, carved into the chalk hillside is the huge figure of a horse, the county's great archaeological monument. The Uffington White Horse, as it is known, is believed to date from the Iron Age. Wayland’s Smithy, a Neolithic burial site, is situated off the Ridgeway trail, about 13 km (8 mi) south of Wantage. Close to the Oxfordshire-Warwickshire border, north of Chipping Norton, is a group of Neolithic monuments known as the Rollright Stones.

The area was subsequently at different times part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, and for a period under Danish rule. Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, was born in Wantage—the town was an important centre in Saxon times and was used as a meeting place by the Witenagemot (royal council). The county is listed in the Domesday Book, with Oxford as its centre and a number of well-populated market towns mentioned. Abingdon developed around an important Benedictine abbey founded in the 7th century. St Edmund of Abingdon was born in the town in the 12th century. Later an important market town, and the principal town of the former county of Berkshire, Abingdon has a noted town hall, designed by a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, and an octagonal jail built by French prisoners-of-war during the Napoleonic Wars, and now used as a sports and arts centre. The wool trade brought immense prosperity to the region in the medieval period.

The foundation and growth of the University of Oxford from the 12th century onwards was of major importance, but not without controversy. Friction between the townspeople of Oxford and students at the university, “town and gown”, erupted in February 1355, when a pitched battle, subsequently known as the massacre of St Scholastica's Day, was fought and a number of students killed. Battles of greater significance took place in the county during the English Civil War, when the city of Oxford remained a leading Royalist stronghold. In World War II, Ditchley Park, north of Blenheim, was used by Winston Churchill as a secret weekend headquarters.