There are many great cities on the surface of the globe. Though I speak only of Oxford I do not mean to imply that the City in which you are sat today is any the lesser. Merely that Oxford is the one of which I am qualified to talk. By dint of experience. The one found then lost when young, as you may also have found then lost your own.
At the heart of your City, as in mine, will cross two roads, distance and direction to all other places measured from their heart. Confusion between North and South resolved at the point. Obstacles of river, canal or lake obstruct your way but are overcome by ford or ferry, or spanned by bridge, so the feet may remain dry.
A wily religious leader assisted by a not-so-able monarch, has ennobled a holy edifice with proportions divine, to dominate the human buildings scattered at its feet. The brilliant facade and the soaring interiors, sumptuously decorated with local stone, exotic metals possessing the power to ever silence the secular pilgrims crowded at its entrance.
Dominated by a slender monumental tower, visible from seven miles, your closeness to Heaven is doubled at a stroke. From the summit may be heard glorious bells or voices on high days and holidays, echoed in the hills, carried on the water.
To your people it is known as are hero or heroine of ancient morality, from an era of which the Elderly Citizen speaks with regret. Traces of mystery and conundrum of construction still lie apparent, yet remain hidden from contemporary view, blind to the resolution of West and East that lies at its heart.
The stone of your public buildings is hewn from local quarries, and set so the seasons may light up its colours to glow in the angle of sun as it sets, like gold. The pattern of habitation traced upon the landscape reveals a history of decisions taken by Forebears to defend and protect, to exploit and go forward. Will be familiar to you, as one of its Citizens, the oft-quoted image or phrase inspired by the view from one of the Mounts.
The City breathes through the green vegetation of park, square or tree, and teeming traffic radiates along roads as does blood in arteries. Some quarters are rich, others desolate; here a street is sumptuous, there a mere backwater. Against the heat of the dog days someone has provided shadow, another, shelter from the needles of rain. This square bustles with commerce and effort, the neighbouring courtyard is empty save for a solitary cat, stretching and settling once again, blinking in sunlight.
The fabric of the City is worn with the step and the handprint of endeavour. Every hollow and crack stores a thousand whispers. Each day some part of its shape and substance is changed by its people. A place of impermanence and the dilemma of decision. For here are
Power and pestilence, war or babies, truth or romance, religion and loss;
Need and desire, study or story-time, travel or hearth, fear and entertainment, competition or laughter;
Art and amazement, foreign or familiar, absence of laughter, birth and copulation;
Tears out of longing, sighing or dying, pain in dreaming, news and observation, claim and counterclaim, accident or revenge;
Pilfering and cooking, accumulation and decay, sadness and prayerfulness, confession and secrecy;
Affliction and release, demolition and wonder, prison or singing, darkness and greed, apology or kissing;
Nakedness and discovery, imagination and lies, encounter or flight;
Conversation and consumption, disdain or thoughtfulness;
Care or resentment, celebration and argument.
In the City as many arrive as are leaving. Some have finished as others begin. Lovers become parents and, protesting, the old give way to the young.
Oxford. A frontier town, a stronghold against Danes on a spit of gravel, surrounded by rivers, defended by flood meadows to the rear. There is nothing here more ancient than the tenth century relic. It is a road junction, a river crossing, an English Midland town; a university without a founder, built on a whim when Robert d’Oilly, keeper of the Castle for William the Conqueror, founded the College of the Secular Canons of St George.
Oxford. A city that does not allow access freely to all for it likes to be earned, best approached with caution when a confluence of conditions are right. If you are born here, you only appreciate it after you have left.
You will not come upon it by accident for it eludes the casual traveller. Approach it by water and you will be turned away at Folly Bridge. Arrive by the railway and nothing of it is revealed at your destination. Tackle it by road and you will only skirt it. Approach it by air and it has passed beneath you in a twinkling. Walk down the hills towards it and it disappears in the valley.
Oxford. You may ride through it by bicycle as a student for a period but the authority its degree will bestow on you is to be enjoyed elsewhere. Exiled in a bar you will sit and talk of it with longing, yet remain intimate with its places, for we know their names:
Carfax, St Aldates, Cornmarket, High Street; the rounded dome of the Radcliffe Camera, the gateway to Merton, Magdalen Tower; the meadows of Christchurch, a Cattle Market by Castle Mound; Gloucester Green, the Randolph Hotel, the Broad Street cross of the Martyrs set in the tarmac; Old Tom in his Tower, and Blackwells, Holywell and Trinity; the Playhouse, Sheldonian, different kinds of theatre; St Johns and Balliol, the Church of St Mary’s.
Oxford. An excellent place for a childhood, being a small place. To be small in this City is to be blessed. It has retained its human dimension, there being not much in it above three storeys and quickly gone round even on little legs.
Town and Gown
Attracted down the ages by patronage and majesty, a group of scholars has preserved ancient words, handing down learning from seats that are become a University. The Oxford education method begins in earnest in the twelfth century. Sixteen year old boys undertake it for seven years, like the common apprentices. Grammar, rhetoric and logic are taught. The seven liberal arts: the trivium. That is, the correct modes of expression of thought. Also the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. Examination is by public disputation and argument. All members of the University are in Church orders, hence subject to ecclesiastical law. Black academic robes and their coloured hoods, as still worn, remind you of this status.
In your city does the Town war with the Gown? The young University grows. Teachers come to teach and youth comes to learn but where to sleep? A seamier side of Oxford is revealed.
We feel invaded but these immigrants are fair game. This is a captive market. Wily townsfolk with space make accommodation available.Here’s a master, here’s a student, here’s a bed.
– Cost you a bit, sir.
An awful lot they mean, and a few slaps around the head to go with it. Swindled and mistreated. We’ll show them who’s master.
Like all apprentices in that era, the students begin their study at sixteen for seven long years. Cooped up in poor conditions, young males become boisterous, things are broken. Now riotous. Heads are broken. The local lads respond. Pitched battles in the streets. The bells of St Martins at Carfax call the citizens out for a good fight, the bells of St Mary’s respond for the students.
And a townswoman dies.
– An accident says the Gown.
– More like murder says the Town.
It is 1209. King John is having a disagreement with the Pope and executions are temporarily the responsibility of the burgesses. The mood is ugly.
The University fears death and decamps, part of it to Cambridge, where a rival centre of study is promptly founded. In 1213, to secure its return, King John orders Oxford to pay an annual endowment to the University. And the rents are to be halved forthwith. The forces of Church and Monarch have ranged with the University, the final outcome is obvious. Yet the battles continue apace, for it is an uneasy peace, an unjust imposition.
There is more. For seven hundred years they rage. Several voices try to stop them but youth does not heed. The feast day of Saint Scholastica dawns, 10 February 1355, the worst battle yet. And students are slain in the riots.
Power and authority are lost to the Gown. Control of the quality of our bread and ale. Verification of our weights and measures. The fixing of the rents. The cleansing of the streets. And public discipline over scholar and citizen alike.
A ritual humiliation of the Town is devised, a service of penance. On admission to office, the Mayor Sheriffs and sixty burgesses of the City must attend the University church of St Mary’s and offer one penny each upon the altar. Atonement for the University’s dead. They do this every change of office from 1357 to 1825. King Henry III lays an obligation upon each Mayor of Oxford to swear to uphold the liberties of the University. They do this every change until 1856. Parliament allocates two members to Oxford. Each student shall have two votes, one from home and one at the University. They do this every election until 1948. The University is given twelve places in the City Council Chamber.
They will finally agree to reduce this to eight in the month of May 1968. This prerogative is lost altogether in 1973. Female undergraduate students are ultimately admitted to several of the major colleges in 1974.
Reconciliation
Following repeal of the Act in 1856, it becomes fashionable to propose healing projects that celebrate the new entente.
The City Fathers come up with the idea of founding a high school to educate Town boys for a Gown career. The University contributes. Several scholarships are put in place, providing direct access to certain colleges. The University’s examining board is enlisted to maintain examination standards.
Prince Leopold, a scion of the Saxe-Coburgs, is collared during a visit to Oxford in 1881 and lays the foundation stone. Noble approval. A stone building of classical proportions, harmonised with the city’s architecture, is commissioned from Sir Thomas Jackson. To house one hundred and twenty boys. It is of sufficient quality at closure in 1966 for the University to want to house the Social Sciences there.
My school. COHS: the City of Oxford High School for Boys (1881-1966). Where Lawrence of Arabia was a pupil…
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