Today is Oxfordshire
Day. Here are some things you might not know about the county of Oxfordshire.
- Oxfordshire is one of the most rural counties in England. Of its 666,100 population, a third live in towns with populations of less than 10,000.
- It is also reputed to be the furthest place from the sea in the UK.
- King John, Edward the Confessor and Alfred the Great all come from Oxfordshire. Wantage is said to be where Alfred's famous cake burning incident took place. As well as kings, two Prime Ministers hail from Oxfordshire – Winston Churchill and David Cameron. Oxford is said to have more published writers per square mile than anywhere else – Dorothy Sayers, PD James and Martin Amis are among those born in the county. Also from Oxfordshire are Stephen Hawking, cellist Jacqueline du Pre, Tim Henman, Hugh Laurie and Martha Lane-Fox.
- The largest cities and towns are Oxford, Banbury, Bicester, Didcot and Henley-on-Thames. Oxford is the county town.
- Abingdon was once the county town of Berkshire – but lost its status in 1870. A boundary change 104 years later brought the town into Oxfordshire. It can still claim to be the oldest continuously occupied settlement in the UK.
- There are more Pigs than people living in Oxfordshire.
- Aynho is a village on the Northamptonshire border which, in Medieval times, paid its rent to the lord of the manor in Apricots.
- Banbury has the oldest working dry-dock in the country, dating back more than 200 years.
- Radcot Bridge in Oxford is the oldest bridge over the River Thames. It dates from around 1150, and was built by Cistercian monks.
- Oxfordshire has the oldest hill figure in Britain. The White Horse of Uffington is 374 feet long and thought to date back 12,000 years, to the late Bronze Age.
 |
Browse other topics I've covered in this blog - HERE.
Like my Facebook page for news of Topical Ten posts posts on my writing blog, a weekly writing quote and news of upcoming publications |
No comments:
Post a Comment