County in England
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is where the four-minute mile fell, Churchill was born in a palace, and a fibreglass shark has been stuck in a roof since 1986.
Key information
- County
- Oxfordshire
- Nation
- England
- Population
- About 725,000 (2021 Census)
- Area
- About 2,600 square kilometres
- Known for
- University of Oxford, Blenheim Palace, the Cotswolds, Henley Regatta, Morse and Tolkien
- What locals are called
- Oxonians (from the abbreviation Oxon)
- Famous people
- Winston Churchill, Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkien, Roger Bannister
- Football clubs
- Oxford United, Oxford City, Banbury United
About Oxfordshire
A palace, a shark and a very odd skyline
Start with the shark. In 1986 a 7.6-metre fibreglass shark appeared to have plunged headfirst through the roof of an ordinary terraced house in Headington, Oxford. It was commissioned by the house's owner, Bill Heine, and made by the sculptor John Buckley. Locals have loved it ever since. That is Oxfordshire all over: grand on the surface, mischievous underneath. The same county holds Blenheim Palace, a baroque giant given to the Duke of Marlborough after his victory at Blenheim in 1704. It is a World Heritage Site, and Winston Churchill was born there in 1874. Churchill is also buried here, in the churchyard at Bladon, just a short walk from the palace gates.
The city that taught the English-speaking world
Teaching was going on in Oxford by 1096, which makes the University of Oxford the oldest in the English-speaking world. Its colleges, quadrangles and libraries gave Matthew Arnold his phrase "city of dreaming spires". The county is full of firsts and oldests. The Ashmolean, opened in 1683, is the oldest university museum in the world. The Oxford Botanic Garden, founded in 1621, is the oldest in Britain. The Bodleian Library, with its round Radcliffe Camera next door, has been collecting books since the early 1600s. During the Civil War, Charles I made Oxford his capital from 1642 to 1646. The royal court took over Christ Church and the colleges, and the king's cause held out here until the city surrendered. The university has also been a film set. Christ Church's great hall was the model for Hogwarts' dining hall in the Harry Potter films.
Where a rabbit hole began on a river
On 4 July 1862 the mathematician Charles Dodgson rowed up the Thames from Oxford with three young sisters, including Alice Liddell, the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church. He made up a story as they went. Under the name Lewis Carroll, it became Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. A few decades later, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were swapping drafts of their own imagined worlds with fellow writers, the Inklings. They met in Oxford pubs, notably the Eagle and Child, and in Lewis's college rooms. Tolkien is buried in Wolvercote Cemetery. Then there is television's Oxford of murder: Morse, Lewis and Endeavour have made the city's quads and pubs a crime scene for decades.
Sixty seconds that changed running
On 6 May 1954, at the Iffley Road track in Oxford, Roger Bannister ran the first mile in under four minutes: 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. It was a feat many had considered close to impossible. The county's other sporting glory belongs to Oxford United, who beat Queens Park Rangers 3-0 at Wembley to win the League Cup in 1986. Their Wembley winners' medals remain a proud local memory. The summer belongs to the water. Henley-on-Thames hosts the Henley Royal Regatta, held since 1839, where rowers race side by side along a straight course of about a mile and a quarter, while spectators in blazers and boaters watch from the bank.
Cars, cakes, blankets and fusion
In Cowley, William Morris (later Lord Nuffield) built Morris Motors into one of Britain's great carmakers. Today the plant still produces the Mini. Witney, meanwhile, was long known for its blankets, and Banbury for its spiced, currant-filled Banbury cakes and for the Cross of nursery-rhyme fame. Oxford marmalade is part of the story too. Frank Cooper's began selling it from his shop on the High Street in 1874. Science keeps the county busy. Culham, near Abingdon, houses the Joint European Torus facility, which ended experimental operations in December 2023 and is now being decommissioned. In 2022 it announced a record 59 megajoules of fusion energy. Nearby Harwell and Didcot have become magnets for research.
Stones, horses and morris men
Oxfordshire's countryside is older than almost anything the university can boast. The Rollright Stones, near Chipping Norton, are a complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments: the King's Men stone circle, the Whispering Knights burial chamber and the King Stone. Legend says they were once a king and his men, turned to stone by a witch. The Uffington White Horse, cut into chalk on the Downs, is around 3,000 years old. In the west, honey-coloured villages such as Burford sit on the edge of the Cotswolds. In the south-east the Chilterns roll down to the Thames. At Kelmscott Manor, William Morris found his idea of a perfect home. Oxfordshire also keeps strange traditions alive. In Bampton, morris dancers perform at the late-May Spring Bank Holiday celebrations, continuing a generations-old Whitsun tradition. Chipping Norton has more recently become a byword for celebrity country living, with Jeremy Clarkson's farm shop among its draws.