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Published: December 24th 2009
Winchester - a detour on the way to Oxford. We went to Winchester to meet
Andy and Josie , a couple we first met when we hosted them at home via Hospitality Club. They are the reason we have a blog on this site; we were impressed by theirs and so moved from another site to this one.
We had a wander round the
Christmas Market behind the cathedral then went up to the
Great Hall for a look at King Arthurs Round Table. A slight misnomer as it wasn't made until the 14th C and King Arthur was around at least 750 years earlier. It was made round to ensure that no one knight was better placed than any other, and each knight had their labelled place. Click
here for some great details including the knights on the table. There were also some neat stained glass windows with the coats of arms of kings, bishops, and other “important” people. On the other end of the Great Hall, opposite the Round Table, are painted all the MP's from Winchester from ages ago, but we cant remember the dates! Sorry!
We had a late lunch of Broccoli and Stilton soup, then headed
off to Overton and Andy and Josie's house. There was some snow around Winchester, more like a heavy dusting, but it got thicker as we got closer to Overton. Still a bright, clear winters afternoon, just with white on the ground. And cold!
Off to Oxford We left Overton mid morning the following day for Oxford. We had managed at last to find a couch, a few days before Christmas isn't the best time to find someone home in Oxford it seems!
By the time we got to Oxford, the snow had vanished, and the clouds had built up suggesting more was on its way. Erwin's flat was easy to find, and with all his neighbours away for Christmas, we had no trouble parking right outside the front door.
Around Oxford The Saxon Tower at St Michael at the North Gate
St Michael at the North Gate is mentioned in the Domesday Book, the tower was built in the late saxon times at around 1040 and the oldest part of the church dates from the 13th century. While the font wasn't all that exciting to look at, William Shakespeare did apparently stand by it as he
was a godparent to the child of a Cornmarket innkeeper! The church was a Royalist stronghold during the civil war; John Wesley preached the Michaelmas sermon there in 1726 (same 15th C pulpit is still in use today); the designer and writer William Morris was married there.
We didn't look round the church though, we just climbed the Saxon tower - Oxfords oldest building. There is nothing left of the North Gate or the Bocardo Prison that the tower was connected to. We just went past some old bells and the old clock mechanism before coming out into the cold on the top of the tower. The views of old “gown” Oxford, more or less what we'd come to see, we marred by all the newer buildings of “town” Oxford. Everything was all crammed together, one rooftop leading onto the next, with a few more towers and steeples sticking up.
The Walking Tour We signed up for a 2 hour walking tour of Oxford the first afternoon we were there to give us a overview of the city. Unlike the walking tour of Bath though, we had to pay for this one! We started off with a quick
intro to the city and the tour then stopped in front of a
brick cross in the middle of Broad Street. This is supposed to be the site of the stake Bishops Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer were burnt at for refusing to convert to Catholicism. We went back past the Saxon Tower and into “gown” Oxford.
First stop was
Jesus College and its Quad, Dining Hall and chapel. The Dining Hall was slightly Hogwarts-ish with its benches and long tables, but it was tiny in comparison. The dining hall at Hogwarts is meant to be based on the one at Christ Church. At least the hall was warmer than outside! We had a quick look in the chapel, again quite small, but impressive in its decoration.
From there we walked past
Radcliffe Camera and the
Bodleian Library, the
Sheldonian Theatre where to capping ceremonies take place and other college buildings.
The streets of “gown” Oxford are much quieter than the “town” streets with all their shops. “Gown” streets are full of old buildings, with no indication of which buildings are with which college, where one college ends and the next begins. We walked through a few of
these quieter streets to
Merton College, the second of the two we'd be shown around. It was a shame the tour went to Merton College as this is the one that Erwin goes to (he's just about finished his PhD) and he said he'd show us around. But never mind. We went through the Quad - Oxfords smallest? - to the chapel - one of the bigger ones - but couldn't see the dining hall. The chapel had some neat paintings on the ceiling, hard to photograph in the dim light though.
The tour finished in the
University Church, St Mary the Virgin where the trial of the Bishops was held. One of the pillars has a chunk cut out to fit in a raised platform for the Bishops to stand on to defend themselves / plead their case. It was the original university building with a small library and meeting room built on the side.
At the end of the tour, we met up with Erwin and he took us to the oldest pub in town,
The Turf Tavern. This used to be a mill, and when the straight and upstanding owner died, his sons turned it
into a pub. At least, thats what Erwin said. Anyway, many famous and infamous people have stopped their for a drink, from John Thaw to Bill Clinton to Dylan Thomas.
Couch Surfing Meetings We went to two CS meetings in Oxford. The first was unofficial, it was the birthday of one of Erwins friends he'd met through CS (Will), and he had a small gathering to celebrate. All but one person there were also couch surfers, and all good friends who meet up often. The group were really welcoming and friendly, and quite happily shared the ice-cream cake and included us in their games of “Werewolves”. This is a card game we hadn't heard of before, but wouldnt mind playing again.
The next evening we went to a more official meet in a pub in the city centre. The guy who organised this, Al, was at the party the evening before, but was working late and so wasn't going to be at the pub very early. When we got the the pub, it was crowded with people doing a quiz, and there was no-one we recognised from the night before. We sent Al, the organiser, a text to
find out who might be there, and he got back to us saying that the group had moved elsewhere. We went round the corner to the wine bar they had defected to, and found a completely different group from Wills birthday group. They were a lot less welcoming and inclusive, didn't introduce themselves and kept up their own conversations in small groups. Part of this might have been the surroundings, but a lot was the people there.
Museums Oxford has a lot of museums, but we only had time for a couple. We spent a couple of hours wandering round the
Ashmolean looking at what interests us the most, the ancient world, Egypt, Nubia, Greece, the Roman empire, prehistoric Europe. We also had time to look at the Conservation exhibits and those on money and writing.
The Ashmolean was founded in 1683 and is Britain's first public museum. It has moved location several times, and in one of its former homes is the
Museum of the History of Science. This is three floors (three rooms really) of display cases packed with instruments from all fields of science. There were astrolabes and cameras, microscopes and slide rules. And heaps
more. The labelling was great if you wanted to know what the item was and where it came from, but useless if you wanted any idea of how it worked! In the basement was another small exhibition of
"Steampunk".
Oxford Castle Throughout its history, Oxford Castle has been used as a prison, a place of incarceration, with people being locked up in the saxon tower, the 900 year old crypts and the 18th C prison tower and cellblock., right up till HMP Oxford was closed in 1996. Not that people were locked up in the old tower and crypts for all that time, the most recent prisoners were in the slightly newer block. Now they have a nice new prison with air-con, ensuites, tv's and decent meals. The newest of the old cell blocks is now a luxury hotel, with each bedroom being made up from two cells, with a third cell being the ensuite.
We were taken up the Saxon St Georges Tower and down to the crypts (didn't meet the resident ghosts though) by a guide dressed up as Jack Ketch the executioner, then were free to wander the cell block ourselves. We had some fun
with mug shots, but were slightly underwhelmed overall. There wasn't quite as much to see or do as we thought.
Christ Church Christ Church consists of
college and
cathedral. The self guided tour takes you through parts of both. The first church on the site was built in the lifetime of St Frideswide, the patron saint of Oxford (680-727). The present building was constructed / reconstructed between 1150 and 1210 as a monastery church. During the reformation, the monastery was forced to close (1524). The following year, Cardinals College was founded on the site by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and the church becomes the college chapel. In 1546 the college is refounded as Christ Church by King Henry VIII and the church becomes the cathedral of the new diocese of Oxford. During the English Civil War (1642-1646) King Charles I lived and worshipped at Christ Church.
One of the highlights of our tour was the
Dining Hall, built in 1529 with its links to Alice in Wonderland and Harry Potter. One of the stained glass windows has lots of little pictures of Alice and other characters from the book. Other connections include the long necked “firedogs” by the two
huge fire places (Alices neck grows long in the story); the White Rabbit was based on Alices father, the Dean Henry Liddell, who left dinner every night down a small spiral stair behind the high table (turns into a rabbit hole in the book); a large portrait of Henry VIII, the colleges founder, who beheaded two of his wives (the Red Queen continually shouts “off with her head!”. The dining hall at Hogwarts is meant to have been based on the one at Christ Church (and all the others probably as all the ones we saw were similar), and scenes from the movies were shot there.
The cathedral was impressive with all its stained glass windows and 15th C vaulted ceiling. One window (with many panels) tells the story of St Frideswide.
The large quad at Christ Church college is called Tom Quad. This is from the seven ton “Great Tom” bell that hangs in Sir Christopher Wrens Tom Tower over the gatehouse. The bell strikes 101 times every night at 9.05pm. The original college had 101 students and they all had to be inside the walls at 9pm Oxford time. Oxford time is 5 minutes later than
Memorial marker in Merton College Chapel
I'm not sure if you can read this easily, this is a good example of the wonderful language used to describe people years ago.GMT.
And that is about all we had time to see in Oxford. We admired (or didn't in some cases) the architecture as we wandered round. We slipped and slid on the icy pavements, rued the lack of snow that would have made for some great pictures, and decided that we needed to go back again to see more.
Driving back to New Milton, we stopped to see Andy and Josie again and find out how they got on decorating their bedroom (not far! They got snowed in and couldn't get plaster, and there was no point painting unplastered brick work!). We took a few pictures of the snow we passed, it might be the only snow we get here. The forecast for the last fews days of our trip is for warmer and wetter weather. The official forecast is for a grey Christmas, not a white one.
To all our family and friends reading this, and to everyone else that finds and reads our blog, we hope you have a great Christmas and our love and best wishes for 2010. Please keep reading as we intend to keep travelling.
To all those we didn't send cards to, sorry, we left NZ in a bit of a rush and left our address book at home!! Please dont think we forgot you
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