Day 7: Oxford!

Oxford gets an exclamation mark because it was a trip I kind of dreaded and has probably been my favorite part so far.  I thought ooh, we get to walk around a college campus, fascinating.  No, Oxford is a big town and everything is ancient.  The first thing we saw was a church tower, only the tower remains.  The church which had been around since 1000 AD or so was knocked down in the late 1800s so that they could make the street wider.  That's the mindset these people have; 1300 AD is like yesterday to them because they have so many buildings that are so much older.  We bought a little map with a suggested walking tour on it and started on that first, then got distracted by the castle on our way. 

Here we are touching a one thousand year old church tower.  Except for Aspen.  She Loves history and wanted to give it hug like a super cute nerd.

 So I'm no commercial contractor but this whole concept kind of disturbs me; the next level of a house should not be larger than the foundation right?  This was really popular through the fifteenth century which was a big problem during the great fire of 1666 (which the Protestants decided was God's attempt to cleanse their country of the Catholics and vice versa; and they hanged a baker for the starting of the fire who was later found to not even be anywhere near the start of the fire.)

So this is our castle.  It was built near the end of the 11th century though it is hard to set a specific date.

During the Anarchy of 1140 when Matilda, the rightful heir to the throne, was denied the kingdom due to her ovaries she raised up a whole huge rebellion and started a war.  She went to Oxford Castle and used it as her base of operations.  The castle was laid to siege for three months and the myth is that Matilda escaped by climbing down the wall in a white gown that camouflaged her into the snow and then ice skated down the river.  No one was there but that sounds lovely so lets stick with it.  By the 1700s the castle was in a good amount of disrepair and was only fit to house prisoners and yes the castle became a prison, until 1996!!!!  It doesn't even have indoor plumbing folks and is super, super creepy.  It housed a few famous prisoners such as Mary Blandy in 1751 who poisoned her father with arsenic.  She was a classy highborn lady so she was allowed to have guests for tea as long as her ankle was still manacled.  Or, my favorite, Issac Duncan who was a highway man with a well known sense of fashion who, rather than let the man keep him down, dressed himself to the absolute nines for his execution including a mask.  He snatched the rope out of the executioner's hands, put it around his neck, and jumped into the crowd.  Like a boss!

 Sorry mom and dad, I got into trouble in London!  (I could read Claire's mind and she was just wishing that she had rotten food.)  What you can't see is that with my tiny girl hands I can slip them out  : P

 Omg, Claire got a picture of a ghost... 

This is me standing in the haunted corner.  Before the castle was expanded there was a church, where we are in the picture is the church's basement which, with its cool temperature, was great for housing corpses!  And food.

This was my favorite part of the trip.  We stepped into one of the colleges and in this courtyard, surrounded by clipped grass and orderly walkways is an overgrown section with ancient headstones.  It made for some bomb pictures!  Claire and I naturally freaked out and entered tourist mode, snaping pictures of everything.  One girl mentioned something about tourists and I wanted to grab her and shake her.  "Your school is a thousand year old converted cathedral with stained-glass windows and has a cemetery with graves covered with freaking buttercups and forget-me-nots!  You should be walking around all the time, looking at everything and freaking out at the history and picturesque beauty that you get to partake of!!!  If you're not reading poetry in the courtyard every day then you are messed up as a person."

 I think this is my favorite picture that I have ever taken.

 Or this one.

Seriously, just when I thought Oxford couldn't get any cooler.
So we walked around on our tour until it felt like our feet were going to fall off.  Aspen bought a "Keep Calm and Study" tee-shirt from one of the hundred Oxford School stores.  I would really love to go back here before the trip is over.  Apparently there's a C.S. Lewis tour which, being a nerd, sounds awesome to me.  Hopefully its not my last visit!