Page 4 - July 2013 Kettle published 2

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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
At Newbridge, where, despite the name, the bridge
(of Taynton limestone) is 800 years old, the River
Windrush joins the Thames having flowed from the
Cotswold Hills down through Burford and Bourton
and Witney. Port Meadow, just above Oxford is an
ancient grazing land that has never been put to the
plough. It was given to Oxford by William the
Conqueror to make them like him and to this very
day the 200 Freemen of Oxford as well as the
commoners of Binsey and Wolvercote are entitled to
graze their livestock here.
The settlement of
Oxenaforda
grew up in 8th
Century in the meadows surrounding a Priory by a
crossing on the Thames. Today, in Oxford you can
see buildings of every English architectural style
from the Saxon to the present day. The University is
first mentioned in records from the 1100s but most
of the colleges were established during the 1200s
when new translations of the writings of the Greek
philosophers were inspiring scientific discoveries
and new ideologies throughout Europe. Sponsored
by the church the University colleges were an
attempt to reconcile the Greek philosophies with
Christian theology.
Old Mother Isis & Mother Dunch’s Buttocks
Historically and especially in Victorian times
gazetteers and cartographers, Oxford academics all,
insisted that the River Thames above the Iffley Lock
and through Oxford should correctly be called Isis
from the source at Thames Head in Gloucestershire
to Dorchester-on-Thames where the River Isis meets
the River Thame. Only then do these rivers combine
to become the Thames-Isis from which, say the
academics, comes the Celtic name Tamesis.
The academics of Oxford are a powerful lobbying
force and if you look at a modern Ordnance Survey
map the river is still labeled
Thames or Isis
until
Dorchester.
After ten more miles of lush meadows the River
Thames (or Isis) reaches Abingdon, one of several
contenders for the title of Britain’s oldest continuously
occupied town with a proven history of 6000 years of
settlement. In 1084 William the Conqueror celebrated
Christmas at Abingdon Abbey leaving his son here,
the future Henry I, to be educated by the monks.
Abingdon was once the county town of Berkshire and
built a very impressive County Hall in the 17
th
century
to fend off a challenge by Reading to whom it finally
lost the title when it made the mistake of failing to
engage fully with the railway revolution by refusing
a main line station. In 1974 Abingdon became part of
Oxfordshire – previously the River Thames had
formed the boundary between Berkshire and
Oxfordshire.
The bridge at Clifton Hampden - a chocolate box
village of Elizabethan thatched cottages - is so
narrow that it has traffic lights and the river here
was once so shallow that it was an important crossing
point for cattle. The name describes how the village
and its church are raised high above the river on a cliff