Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Unusual towpath viaduct passes over as the canal crosses the River Cherwell on the level above
Aynho Weir
.
The university was in existence by the 11th century, the oldest in the English speaking
world. The oldest of the 35 colleges dates from 1249 while the youngest don was 17-year-old
Henry Phillpotts at Magdalen in 1795. The colleges were heated by Moira coal, brought via
the Ashby-de-la-Zouch Canal. Defoe's Moll Flanders and an extravagant husband blew £93
in a 12 day visit to the city and it was visited by Frankenstein. Evelyn Waugh's
Brideshead
Revisited
saw much of its early action in the colleges, Adam Bell was a fellow in Elizabeth
Gaskell's
North and South
and, in the same way, much of the scene-setting for Ian McEwan's
On Chesil Beach
took place around north Oxford. Fictitious students include Tibby Schlegel
in EM Forster's
Howards End
, Scott's Guy Mannering, Tom Brown and Jim Brading in Ar-
thur Ransome's
We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea
.
The city has been used for filming
Inspector Morse, A Fish Called Wanda, The Madness of
King George, Shadowlands
and
Waiting for God
. To Matthew Arnold it was the 'home of
lost causes' and it was where Lewis Carroll composed
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
.
JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis were resident writers and astronomer Edmond Halley was also
here.
Oxford buildings of note include Blackwell's bookshop, the Bodleian Library and the
world's oldest museum, the Ashmolean, which dates from the 1840s although the collection
was only begun in 1683.
