OXFORD, the county town of Oxfordshire, England, a municipal and parliamentary borough, cathedral city, and seat of an ancient university, lies on the river Thames, 51 m. by road and m. by rail W.N.W. of London (G.W. railway) ; main rail ways also to Worcester and Birmingham (G.W. railway) ; direct service also via Banbury to Leicester and Sheffield (L.N.E. rail way), branch line L.M.S. to Cambridge crossing main line at Bletchley. The Thames is navigable below Oxford; there is a canal to the Avon valley and Birmingham ; and numerous local road motor services. Population (1931), 80,540.
The site of Oxford is a low gravel terrace between the upper Thames and its tributary, the Cherwell, which meet in wide water meadows within a gap in a line of oolitic plateaux represented by Headington hill on the East and the twin crests of Cumnor Hurst and Wytham on the west. Though there are sparse Romano British habitations on both sides of the valley, the Roman road northwards from Dorchester to Alchester lies far back to the east, and only a few finds betray a track across the valley from Head ington towards Binsey. Oxford itself only becomes perceptible in Saxon times, in the church of St. Martin (whose dedication and some rude masonry in the tower mark its early date) close to Carfax (Lat. quadrifurcus, French carrefour) the intersection, in the heart of the city, of north-south and east-west roads. East ward the High street crosses the Cherwell by Magdalen bridge, and offers alternative routes to London via Headington or Little more; southwards St. Aldate's, formerly Fish street, crosses the Thames (Isis) at Folly bridge, for Abingdon and Newbury; northwards, by Cornmarket, are the roads to Banbury and Woodstock; westward, Queen street leads round the south side of the Norman castle to Quaking bridge, over the mediaeval mill stream towards Osney. the modern New road, north of the castle, leads direct to the railway stations and Seven Bridges road for the upper Thames, and south-west England. Early traces are : (I) the Priory (afterwards Augustinian), commemorating St. Frideswide, a local heroine whose good works and adventures, about 720-740, touch also Binsey and Abingdon; of her original church there are arches near her shrine in the cathedral; (2) the conspicuous mound raised (probably about A.D. 900) to com
mand the passage from Mercia into Wessex; (3) Oseney village, beyond the nearest channel of the upper Thames, whose name (Ousen-eye: "water-island") explains the Oksnaforda and Orsna forda of loth century Saxon coins, whence Oxenford and Oxford arose by assimilation to names like Swinford and Shefford. Up stream, between Osney, Binsey and Wolvercote, the "Port Meadow" is still held in common by the freemen of Oxford.
Oxford just appears in history when Edward the Elder, in A.D. 912, "held Lundenbyrg (London) and Oxnaford and all the lands that were obedient thereto" as flanking fortresses of his Thames valley frontier. But the principal centres of the district were not here, but at Abingdon, commanding access to the Vale of White Horse, with an early and wealthy abbey, and Dorchester, similarly dominating the Thames valley, with its pre-Roman earthworks, and Saxon bishopric. River traffic bound for Oxford long paid toll to the abbott of Abingdon. However, several "gemots" were held at Oxford, under Edric, Canute, and Harold I. ; and repeated devastation by the Danes (979, 1002, 1010, 1013) attests military and economic importance.
The Norman governor, Robert d'Oiloi (d'Oyly), incorporated the Saxon mound in a great fortress (117o-1219), of which one tower stands, and Bullock lane and St. Peter le Bailey mark the outworks; he built the Hythe bridge, which reveals the terminal wharfs of the river traffic ; enclosed the town (partially "wasted" in Domesday) with walls of which foundations remain at the (north) Bocardo gate, the fine tower annexed to St. Michael's church. To d'Oiloi's time belong the rebuilding of St. Frideswide's (the present cathedral dates mainly from the fire of 112o), St. Ebbs' near Carfax, St. Peter's, in the east, probably outside the first east wall, and Holywell by the Cherwell beyond. His son Robert founded the splendid Osney abbey, beyond the castle (fragments in the cemetery beyond the G.W. railway). Outside the city, also, north of the cattle market in Gloucester Green, Henry I. built his Beaumont palace overlooking Osney and Port Meadow, and under his "Beau-clerc" patronage Theobald of Etampes already, about 1120, was teaching "6o to ma clerks." As residence of the empress queen Maud, Oxford suffered siege by Stephen.