Oxford's Best-Kept Secrets

A walk through the city's hidden stories, curious corners & forgotten legends

Oxford · 16 stops · 9.4 km · ~2.5 h · Generated

  1. 1. Oxford Castle & St George's Tower

    Oxford Castle Unlocked, 44-46 Oxford Castle, Oxford OX1 1AY

    Oxford Castle & St George's Tower

    Look at this tower. Rough, weathered stone... tapering upward like a clenched fist against the sky. This is Saint George's Tower, and it is now believed to be a survival from late Saxon times, dating to around ten twenty A.D. — a watchtower associated with the west gate of the Saxon city. That makes it the Oldest standing building in all of Oxford... and it was already ancient when the Normans arrived.

    The castle around it was built by a Norman baron named Robert D'Oyly, who arrived with William the Conqueror and was granted vast lands in Oxfordshire. But here's what most people walk right past without knowing. Geoffrey of Monmouth was a serving canon in Saint George's Chapel on this very site, and he would have been based here when he wrote his famous Latin chronicle around eleven thirty-six. That chronicle? It was the Historia Regum Britanniae... the book that gave the world King Arthur and Merlin. The legends we all know were Born right here, in the shadow of this tower.

    But the most extraordinary story happened on a freezing December night in eleven forty-two. After nearly three months of siege, conditions for the garrison were dire. Empress Matilda — daughter of King Henry the First, fighting her cousin King Stephen for the English crown — was trapped inside these walls, starving. One early December evening, she crept out of a postern door in the wall — or, more romantically, possibly shinned down on a rope out of Saint George's Tower — dressed in white as camouflage against the snow. She slipped right through Stephen's watch fires... crossed the frozen River Thames... and vanished into the night. The castle surrendered the day after Matilda's escape. But it didn't matter. She was free. Years later, they signed the Treaty of Wallingford — Stephen could keep his throne, but Matilda's son would be next. Stephen died a year later, and that boy became King Henry the Second, founder of the Plantagenet dynasty. Every English monarch since — down to King Charles the Third — descends from the woman who escaped This tower.

    Now, fast forward five centuries. This place had become a brutal prison. In sixteen fifty, a young servant named Anne Green was found guilty of murder and hanged at Oxford Castle. At her own request, friends pulled her swinging body, and a soldier struck her four or five times with the butt of his musket. After half an hour, she was pronounced dead. Her body was given to university physicians William Petty and Thomas Willis for dissection. But when they opened the coffin... they discovered she had a faint pulse and was weakly breathing. Anne Green was Alive. They revived her. The authorities pardoned her, believing the hand of God had saved her. She took the coffin away with her as a souvenir... married, and had three children.

    A thousand years of stories, pressed into these stones. Saxon watchmen, a fugitive empress, a woman who cheated death itself. Not bad for a building most visitors to Oxford never even notice.

  2. 2. Alice's Shop

    Alice's Shop, 83 St Aldate's, Oxford OX1 1RA

  3. 3. The Covered Market

    Oxford Covered Market, Market Street, Oxford OX1 3DZ

  4. 4. Saxon Tower of St Michael at the North Gate

    St Michael at the North Gate, Cornmarket Street, Oxford OX1 3EY

  5. 5. Oxford Martyrs' Memorial Cross

    Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BD

  6. 6. Blackwell's & the Norrington Room

    Blackwell's Bookshop, 48-51 Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BQ

  7. 7. Museum of the History of Science

    Museum of the History of Science, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3AZ

  8. 8. Duke Humphrey's Library

    Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BG

  9. 9. University Church of St Mary — the Narnia Door

    University Church of St Mary the Virgin, High Street, Oxford OX1 4BJ

  10. 10. Hertford Bridge (Oxford's 'Bridge of Sighs')

    Hertford Bridge, New College Lane, Oxford OX1 3BW

  11. 11. The Turf Tavern

    The Turf Tavern, Bath Place, Oxford OX1 3SU

  12. 12. Holywell Cemetery

    Holywell Cemetery, St Cross Road, Oxford OX1 3TU

  13. 13. Pitt Rivers Museum

    Pitt Rivers Museum, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PP

  14. 14. FREUD Bar (Deconsecrated Church)

    Freud, 119 Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6AJ

  15. 15. Tolkien's Bench by the Cherwell

    Tolkien Bench, University Parks, Oxford OX1 3PT

  16. 16. The Headington Shark

    2 New High Street, Headington, Oxford OX3 7AQ