The English Administrative County of Oxfordshire

Population and area summary of the County of Oxfordshire

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The County of Oxfordshire is located in The Midland Counties of England, it covers an administrative area of 2,605Km² and in 2001 was home to a population of 605,488 persons, that represents 1.23% of that of England and 0.01% of the population of the entire United Kingdom.

More detailed information including visitor attractions and event venues in Oxfordshire is available on this site by following the links below to the Boroughs and/or Districts or follow this link to select a different County.

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Boroughs/Districts of the County of Oxfordshire

Unitary Authorities and Metropolitan Areas are shown below as these locations are historically associated with this county. These areas today are self-governing and are no longer responsible to the County Administration.

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Historical notes about The English Administrative County of Oxfordshire

OXFORDSHIRE in 1950

Geology largely determines not only the face of the landscape and the main industries of a county, but also the character of its people. It is evident that Derbyshire people share many of the characteristics of their native limestone and gritstone. In the same way Oxfordshire people owe much of their individual character of the Cotswold Hills and the valleys formed by the rivers which spring from them.

Their dialect is an odd mixture of Midland and Southern tongues, as befits a county that forms the link between the south and the industrial heart of England.

As with Berkshire, from which it is separated by the winding course of the Thames, Oxfordshire forms a rough rectangle lying midway between the Severn and Thames estuaries and equidistant from the Midlands and south coast. Its extreme length from Banbury in the north to Caversham in the south is something over forty miles. Between the chalk of the Chiltern escarpment in the south-east and the limestone of the Cotswold in the north-west the greater part of the county is a plain formed of two bands, the clay and the greensand. On the latter lies the city of Oxford, centrally placed where the roads from Southampton to the north and from London to South Wales intersect. This position complicates its traffic problems, but makes it obvious why the Pressed Steel Company and Morris Motors chose it in preference to, say, Coventry.

Oxford is one of the most easily accessible of all English cities both by road and rail. It is therefore easy to understand why its narrow streets are always congested and its population numbers over two-fifths of the entire county. Nearly half its make workers are, in fact, immigrants. Indeed, its fame so far overshadows the rest of the county that few tourists know anything of Oxfordshire beyond the boundaries set by the Oxford city walls. While Oxford is not Oxfordshire, it is so important in the county's life that nay description of the latter must begin with the former. This proud city of towers and spires with its exquisite college gardens had its beginnings long before the foundation of the university. In the cathedral lie the remains of a king's daughter, St Frideswide, who founded a nunnery at Osney and died as long ago as AD 720.

It was not until the twelfth century that scholars sought sanctuary here and the oldest colleges, about the seniority of which there is considerable dispute, came into existence in the thirteenth century.

The Oxford Colleges.

University College may perhaps be the oldest though there is no foundation for the claim that it dates from the days of Alfred the Great. All that we know is that University College Balliol, Merton and St Edmund Hall were in existence before 1270. Exeter, Oriel, Queen's and New College followed in the 14th century, Lincoln All Souls and Magdalen in the fifteenth, Brasenose, Corpus, Christ Church, St John's, Trinity and Jesus in the sixteenth, Wadham and Pembroke in the seventeenth, Worcester and Hertford in the eighteenth and Keble in the nineteenth.

Towards the end of the last century the growing freedom of women showed itself in the foundation of the first women's college, Lady Margaret Hall, in 1878. In the fifteen years which followed three more women's colleges, Somerville, St Hugh's and St Hilda's, came into being.

Christ Church is the largest, richest and noblest college, Magdalen the most beautiful, and Merton (Mob Quad) architecturally the oldest. The gardens of St John's, Worcester, New College and Wadham are outstanding in natural beauty, an exquisite medley of smooth lawns, herbaceous borders and splendid trees. World famous, and an integral part of the university, is the Bodleian Library founded in 1603.

Oxford during term-time is very different from Oxford during the vacations. The terms, however, are short, consisting only of eight weeks each, and during the Long Vacation, which begins in the middle of June and ends in mid-October, the colleges, though open to the public, are tenanted ony by summer schools and conferences and lack of swarming youthful life that gives each its character.

The revenue of the colleges comes partly from property, and, in consequence, their financial status varies considerably. St John's owns the larger part of north Oxford which is now the main residential area, and its wealth is inevitably great. The total revenue of Christ Church has been computed to be about £500,000 a year.

The actual tuition fees of the university are very low. It is the college dues for board and lodging that used to make university life impossible for those unable to afford £200 -£300 a year. To-day, owing to State bursaries and Government grants, about seventy-five per cent of the undergraduates pay no fees at all. In other words, post-war Oxford is a poor man's university composed of nearly six thousand undergraduates, the greater number of them mature men of twenty-five or so, who have seen six years of war service. A large proportion are already married with families. In consequence, in this post-war undergraduate population, there is far less irresponsibility and far more concentration on work than there used to be. Nevertheless, sport and recreational activities still play a large part in the undergraduate's life, for the value of an Oxford education lies as much in the human contacts that are there made as in the lectures listened to and the books read. Incidentally, lectures are now so overcrowded and books so hard to get that it is difficult for the undergraduate to cope with his work.

There are innumerable societies and clubs to cater for all tastes, and it is in these societies - notably the Union - that the young man learns to find his feet in debate and social intercourse. Many a future statesman has been introduced to politics and oratory at meetings in the Union.

Discipline in the town is preserved by a proctor (a don) who, accompanied by two bull-dogs (college servants in bowler hats and gym shoes), prowls about to see that undergraduates wear gowns after nine 0'clock at night and are in college by midnight. Only Christ Church men are privileged to be out until 12.20 a.m. To be absent after this hour is an offence that incurs severe penalties. An undergraduate may be sent down (expelled) for absence.

All colleges are under the direction of a principal, but his is only known as a principal at Brasenose, Hertford, Jesus and St Edmund Hall; All Souls, Keble, Merton, New College and Woodham are controlled by a warden; Balliol, Pembroke and University College by a master; Corpus, Magdalen, St John's and Trinity by a president; Exeter and Lincoln by a rector; Oriel, Queen's and Worcester by a provost and Christ Church by a dean who is also the dean of the diocese became Christ Church is also the cathedral.

Links with Schools

The layman is apt to find these titles confusing. It is worth remembering, too, that New College is never abbreviated to "New and that Christ Church is usually known as "the house." Some colleges have a close link with particular schools, others with particular counties. Most Winchester boys go to New College, because both belong to the same foundation; most Etonians to Magdalen, most Westminster men to Christ Church. Queen's caters especially for men from the north, Westmorland and Cumberland in particular, Jesus for Welshmen, Exeter for west countrymen and so on. All Soul's, founded to commemorate the men who fell at Agincourt, has no undergraduates. It contains only fellows, all of whom have earned that honour by passing a stiff examination.

The list of famous men produced by the university is far too lengthy to enumerate. Christ Church alone produced William Penn, John Wesley, John Locke, Sir Philip Sidney, Lewis Carroll, John Ruskin, W E Gladstone and Edward VII, besides five Prime Ministers of the nineteenth century. The poet Shelley was for one term at University College, but Cambridge, for some occult reason, has reared a far greater number of major English poets than has Oxford.

The Expanding Modern City of Oxford

The colleges, for the most part, stand very close together within the confines of the old city walls. But modern Oxford has splayed out in every direction, for two or three miles along the Woodstock and Banbury Roads and over the adjoining heights of Cumnor, Headington and Boar's Hill. The main growth has, however, been at Cowley, where stand the vast factories erected by the organization of which Lord Nuffield is the head. Lord Nuffield has given large sums towards the establishment of a medical school and founded Nuffield College for the promotion of research work in industrial relationships, besides other large benefactions.

Cowley is now large enough and important enough to be a self-contained entity, but the Cowley workers still rely on the city for their main entertainment and shopping. Oxford has recently been called the Latin quarter of Cowley.

Oxford also contains a very large cattle market, but this has been overshadowed by Banbury, which has recently become with Reading the best cattle market south of the Tweed with a turnover of well over a million pounds a year.

This brings us to Oxfordshire's second claim to fame, farming.

Wealth from Wool

In the Middle Ages Cotswold wool was one of the chief sources of revenue in the country and from their profits the Cotswold wool merchants built a series of magnificent Perpendicular churches and splendid stone manor houses, of which Chastleton is perhaps the outstanding example.

Indeed, within a radius of ten miles of Burford, the one-time centre of the wool industry, but now know chiefly as a retreat for retired professional and service men and an attraction for tourists, you will find more fascinating villages than in any other area of similar size in Great Britain. This fascination is due to the fact that the houses and churches were built in a period when stone masons were supreme craftsmen, when men had a feeling for style and harmony that is now lost, and partly to the nature of the local stone which weathers to the colour of honey: as a result the buildings look as if they had been saturated for centuries with sunshine. The medieval masons took an especial pride in decoration, so that the chimneys are twisted into spirals, the tall church towers surmounted by delicate battlements, the windows stone-mullioned, and the porches decorated with heraldic devices. In addition, most of the farms and manor houses are provided with a stone dove-cot and a stone-roofed tithe barn.

The beauty of the Cotswold villages is enhanced by the crystal clear trout-streams that ripple past the cottage doors. The valleys of Evenlode, Windrush, Cherwell and Thames are also enriched by the tall swaying poplars and squat pollarded willows which line the water's edge. This is a gracious, serene landscape that has inspsired many poets and novelists, among whom Matthew Arnold and Compton Mackenzie are notable. But this land not only looks good. It is fertile and still brings considerable profit to farmers in spite of the enclosure of the Cotswolds, the decay of craftsmanship and the eclipse of the Cotswold and Oxford Down sheep.

Money in farming to-day lies in dairy herds, so it is not surprising to find that the Cotswold sheep are giving way to herds of Ayshires and Friesians. The Oxfordshire farmers are usually intelligent, up to date in their methods and are hard workers. It is notable that one of the best books written on farming comes from Oxfordshire. It is called The Farming Ladder and its author is a farmer, George Henderson of Enstone. The Oxfordshire farms are not large compared with the Wiltshire farms, but they are compact, orderly, and usually give one the sense of serene wellbeing.

As a hunting county, Oxfordshire is famous, whether for the hedged country of the Bicester or the upland stone wall country of the Heythrop, Cotswold, or Vale of White Horse (Bathurst), normally referred to as V.W.H.

But farmers are less active in the hunting field now that their responsibility is greater, the big landowners are fast disappearing, the country houses and parks, when derequisitioned, were often found to have been seriously damaged by the occupying troops, and it is unlikely that Oxford undergraduates will be able to support the local hunts as they used to do. In spite of these facts, the popularity of hunting is increasing rather than decreasing. But the huntsmen are different. Hunting, once the sport of kings, has become the pursuit of the many, and the Cotswolds, as you can see from a cursory glance at Lionel Edwardes' spirited sketches, make an ideally open country for a gallop.

In the old days almost every shop in the main street of Bicester contained a stable, but war has changed the attitude of the Bicester people. They now entertain some fifteen thousand employees of the enormous Army Ordnance and strongly approve of the proposal to establish light industries in their neighbourhood designed to increase five-fold the population of the town. These changes would inevitably entail a lessening of interest in and facilities for hunting.

Other Oxfordshire market towns take the opposite view, setting their faces strongly against any radical change in their pre-war occupations. Witney, for example, having won a world-wide fame for blanket making, is content, and probably wise, to maintain its reputation in that one direction. The quality of these blankets is said to owe its special excellence at least in part to the waters of Windrush with which they are bleached.

Witney also possesses a flourishing and up-to-date market of which it is very proud. This is a matter of some importance, because the post-war tendency is to concentrate on a few big markets, like that at Banbury, and let the smaller ones, like that of Bicester, die out. Perhaps the Bicester people do not mind as they have their eye on industrial development.

Small county towns like Chipping Norton, Charlbury and Woodstock are increasing in prosperity; they are also becoming more self-contained, concentrating on the development of some single industry, such as glove-making, in addition to providing a shopping centre and market for the surrounding villages.

Indeed the merits of Oxfordshire, as opposed to the city of Oxford, have never been sufficiently recognized by visitors. Not only is it easily accessible by road from the Midlands, south and north, but there is much to attract the sightseer over and above its undulating wolds, its many fascinating little tree-fringed rivers and its enchanting stone villages. For the lover of antiquities there are, three miles north-west of Chipping Norton, the famous Rollright Stones, consisting of a large circle of seventy-seven stones, with a solitary larger stone resembling a cobra's head and known as the King's Stone standing one hundred yards to the north and smaller group of four upright stones four hundred yards to the east known as the Whispering Knights. As to their origin and purpose, we can only speculate; they still remain four thousand years after their erection, mysterious and feared by some local people.

The Priory at Minster Lovell is said to be the scene of the Mistletoe Bough tragedy when a young bride, playing hide-and-seek with her husband, was found dead in a heavy chest, the lid of which was too strong for her to lift when she tried to get out.

At Godstow, on the banks of the Thames, stand the ruins of the Abbey over which reigned the fair Rosamund, mistress of Henry II.

Oxfordshire is so rich in rivers and water meadows that the visitor will get a better sense of the county's unique atmosphere and gain a better notion of its historic past and vigorous present by wandering along its river banks than by any other means.

As he follows the upper reaches of the stripling Thames, he will find himself in a sequestered land with Kelmscott as its centre. In the grey Elizabethan manor house that stands just half a mile from the stream, lived that great reformer and poet William Morris, whose designs in glass, fabrics, sculpture and woodwork did so much to raise the artistic standard of English homes in the Victorian age. The Kelmscott Press will long be remembered for its efforts to extend artistry in design to typography and the printing of books.

The Rose Revived

Just below the ancient bridge of Radcot and beyond that of Newbridge (where a battle was fought in the Civil War). An inn still stands at either end of this bridge, one of which rejoices in the attractive name of The Rose Revived. Both these bridges were old in the fourteenth century.

At Bablockhythe, where there has been a ferry for at least seven hundred years, we recapture memories of The Scholar-Gipsy celebrated so nobly in verse by Matthew Arnold, and then the river winds round the foot of Wytham Woods to Godstow. On reaching Folly Bridge the Thames changes its character and becomes wide and deep enough to enable steamers to ply all the way to London.

It is on this reach of the river, between Folly Bridge and Iffley, that the university holds its bumping races, where college eights, starting one behind the other, endeavour to bump the boat in front in races for the headship of the river. In the Lent term these races, on fixed seats, are called Torpids, in the Summer term, on sliding seats, Eights. Eights Week is Oxford's gala week of the year; it is usually wet.

Riverside Villages

Below Iffley, where is one of the finest Norman churches in the country, the river winds its way past Radley College, one of the most renowned of rowing schools, past Nuneham Courtenay, the seat of Lord Harcourt, by way of Abingdon to Clifton Hampden, a medley of timbered thatched cottages with a tiny church perched like a citadel on a steep rock overlooking a grand sweep of the river, where tall poplars tower above the bridge that leads to the Barley Mow inn which figures so amusingly in Three Men in a Boat.

Just beyond the quiet hamlet of Burcot, the home of John Masefield, the Poet Laureate, and above stand the twin hills known as the Wittenham Clumps, the lower of which is the site of an Iron Age camp.

Villages crowded thickly on or near the river banks hereabouts, notably Dorchester, whose noble church stands on the site of a Saxon cathedral built in the early part of the seventh century, and Benson, where King Offa of Mercia won a battle against the West Saxons in 777. To-day this is a land of aeroplanes and motor-cars, houseboats and canoes, with well-frequented and picturesque riverside hotels, notably those at Shillingford and Moulsford. The Thames here cuts its way through a gap in the chalk downs with the Chilterns riding gently to the east and the smooth Berkshire Downs to the west.

North and South Stoke still preserve their old rural atmosphere, but at Goring the river becomes more congested owing to the proximity of the railway at Reading.

But the beauty of the hanging woods and the smooth lawns that run down to the water's edge enhances the charm of the river, and Mapledurham would still be re-cognized with its great cedars, elm avenue and yew hedge by its one-time frequenter, Alexander Pope, who stayed here as the guest of Theresa and Martha Blount. Lower down again Stanton Harcourt, Pope, in a quiet tower, translated the Iliad.

And so by way of Shiplake, with its memories of another poet, Lord Tennyson, the Oxfordshire Thames reaches its end and fitting climax at Henley, the scene year after year of successes by Oxford oarsmen at its world-famous regatta. The fine wide stretch of the river, known as the Fair Mile, is bordered by broad grassy margins below avenues of towering elms. Nowhere is the Thames lovelier than at the spot where it leaves Oxfordshire. But the Thames is only one of the shire's attractive water-ways. The Cherwell threads its quiet way right through the heart f the country from Cropredy in the north to Oxford, where it joins the Thames.

At Cropredy the curfew has been rung at eight o'clock each evening continuously since 1512, and on Cropredy Bridge, which was built in early medieval times, was fought one of the bitterest skirmishes of the Civil War, reminders of which occur all up and down the county. A few miles away stands Broughton Castle, the finest in Oxfordshire. The home of Lord Saye and Sele, it combines early fourteenth and late fifteenth century styles.

The Cherwell River trails by the side of the railway all the way from Banbury to Oxford, now on this side, now on that, deserting it at Hampton Gay, which has a picturesque ruined manor house, to flirt with Islip, the birthplace of Edward the Confessor, before becoming the happy retreat of undergraduates lying at ease in punts moored up under the willows below Marston Ferry. And as you thread your way through the heart of the county along this quiet stream, you will pass through a land of rich pasture excellent for fattening cattle, much arable on which barley yields a good harvest, but you will rarely see a flock of sheep.

Even more enchanting is the valley of the Evenlode, which runs into the county just south of Warren Hastings' house at Daylesford and winds its way near the Wychwood villages of Milton, Shipton and Ascott, under the lee of the great Forest of Wychwood, which in medieval times was the hunting ground of kings, and close to the walls of the vast park of Blenheim Palace, where stands the palatial monument to the great Duke of Marlborough, Woodstock itself is typical pleasant Oxfordshire village built of Cotswold stone, but Blenheim Palace, covering three of the two thousand five hundred acres of parkland estate, is a monstrous and over-whelming pile of masonry. It cost £500,000 to build and took twenty years to complete. The beautiful park in which it stands does, however compensate for the unlovely building.

Perhaps most loved of all the Oxfordshire waters that feed the Thames is the Windrush, which enters the county just west of Burford, and flows past the enchanting hamlets of Widford and Swinbrook, Asthal and Minster Lovell to join the Thames at Newbridge.

It is a narrow water, reedy and often iris-fringed. It was the setting for that idyllic romance of Compton Mackenzie, Guy and Pauline. If you want to understand the lure of this bird-haunted water, you cannot do better than re-read that story in which we follow the moods of the river through the year.

There are other smaller but scarcely less happy streams, like the Glyme and Dorne, that will take you past the three Bartons and the fine stone houses of Sandford St Martin. There is also the wider and better known Thame to take you close to the battle-field of Chalgrove, where John Hampden was mortally wounded and through the town (which takes its name from the river) where Hampden died. Thame possesses the exceptionally wide street that you find in all Oxfordshire market towns; it is wide enough to hold markets without disrupting the traffic. Thame is a place of quiet dignity, with the usual ancient grammar school, church, park and inns, one of which, the Spreadeagle, gained a high reputation under the aegis of that remarkable innkeeper, John Fothergill. Thame park of three hundred acres was enclosed in Saxon days.

With our eyes on the glory of the Cotswold uplands and rich river valleys, we are apt to overlook the scarcely less remarkable charms of south Oxfordshire, where we came into the wooded greensand country and climb over the ancient Icknield Way to the beech-crowned Chilterns. Here and deep-wooded dells are a succession of quiet little hamlets and villages among which Watlington and Ewelme may be taken as typical, witnesses to the lack of change that the centuries have brought in this fair land. Ewelme was intended for a model village built by Chaucer's granddaughter, the Duchess of Suffolk, and her red brick almshouses have continued to perform their Christian function uninterruptedly for over five hundred years. In the church stands the magnificent alabaster tomb of the duchess, probably the most ornate monument in the kingdom. To-day Ewelme carries on a profitable trade in its watercress beds which enhance the loveliness of an exceptionally lovely village. Here we are indeed in the south country with no trace of Midland influence either in speech or in architecture.

There remains one area of the county which bears no resemblance to the stone wall uplands, the low-lying water-meadows or the wooded Chilterns. This is the great belt of marshland known as Otmoor that lies just to the north east of Oxford. Over this common land the moor land villages of Oddington and Charlton formerly had the right to graze their cattle and sheep, but as it is only partly drained by the sluggish River Ray it became a morass. When, however, in 1830 the authorities decided to enclose this waste land the moor-men attacked the workmen employed on the drains. A less spirited age has put up no opposition (or perhaps less demonstrative opposition) against the acquisition of the moor by the R.A.F. as a bombing area.

But if you can no longer cross this eerie, bird-haunted marsh, you can and should visit the villages on its fringe, notably Charlton-on-Otmoor, where you will see one of the most delicately carved oak rood screens in England, with the original crimson paintings on the panels. Unfortunately, the Morris dances on May Day - still carried on after five hundred years at Bampton - have been allowed to lapse.

I hope I have shown that wherever you go in Oxfordshire you will find some fresh point of interest, some interesting link with the past, considerable industrial activity in the present, a lively, intelligent and soft spoken people, who keep, by virtue of their geographical position, in touch both with the ancient seat of learning and the modern world of commerce and mechanized farming.