Wren’s sundial
There are sundials great and small everywhere in Oxford. One of the most impressive adorns the library of All Souls College and is, according to the college’s website, ‘attributed’ to Christopher Wren.
All posts tagged: Oxfordshire
The resurrection of the slippery quean
Anne Greene’s luck only began to turn after she was hanged. A maid-servant in the household of Sir Thomas Read in the Oxfordshire village of Duns Tew, her misfortunes began when Sir Thomas’s grandson Jeffrey took a fancy to her.
Salvation and damnation at stake
Walk down the middle of Broad Street in Oxford, taking care to avoid being hit by a car or, more likely, a bicycle, and you will see a cross of granite setts, exposed like an ulcer in the smooth tarmac of the road.
Frideswide and the treacle well
The Saxon princess-abbess-saint Frideswide was not the founder of Oxford: there was certainly a settlement at the confluence of the Cherwell and the Thames well before her time. But she has a claim to be one of the founders of the idea of Oxford, the notion of the city as a nexus of learning, religion, and occasional miracles.