to lay on it. The chippings were white, so the walk got the name of White. This was corrupted at the end of the eighteenth century to Wide Walk, and hence to Broad
Walk—its present name—which really describes it now better than the original phrase.
The destruction of the western bays of the church by Wolsey accounts for the shortened aspect of the nave, slightly relieved though it is by the new western bay which serves as a sort of ante-chapel to the nave and choir which now form the College Chapel of Christ Church. But the appearance of the Cathedral owes something of its strangeness to the fact that it represents, in general plan, the design of King Æthelred’s Church reared upon the site of S. Frideswide’s.
CHAPTER II
THE MOUND, THE CASTLE AND SOME CHURCHES
THE property of S. Frideswide’s Nunnery formed one of the chief elements in the formation of the plan of Oxford. The houses of the population which would spring up in connection with it were probably grouped on the slope by the northern enclosure wall of the nunnery, and were themselves bounded on the north by the road which afterwards became the High Street, and on the west by that which was afterwards named Southgate Street, then Fish Street, and is now known as S. Aldate’s. This road, giving access from Wessex to Mercia, was probably one of the direct lines from the north-west to London in the tenth century. It led down to the old fords over the shallows which once intersected the meadows of South Hincksey, and gave, as some suppose, its name to the town.[3] The fords were superseded by the old Grand Pont, and Grand Pont in turn by Folly Bridge.
Folly Bridge, as it now stands, was built a little south of Grand Pont, the old river-course to the north having been filled up by an embankment. The river now marks the Shire boundary which was once marked hereabouts by the Shire Ditch. Crossing the bridge to the Berkshire shore, the road, wherein you may still trace the piers of the old Grand Pont “linked with many a bridge,” leads up to Hincksey. There the modern golf-links are, and the “lone, sky-pointing tree” that Clough and Arnold loved. And this road it was which, in the poetic imagination of Matthew Arnold, was haunted by the scholar gipsy.
The main road leads over the hill, which is crowned by Bagley Wood, to Abingdon. That charming village, where once the great monastery stood, was separated in early days from the city by a great oak forest. Wandering therein, book in hand, a certain student, so the story runs, was met by a ferocious wild boar, which he overcame by thrusting his Aristotle down the beast’s throat. The boar, having no taste for such logic, was choked by it, and his head, borne home in triumph, was served up, no doubt, at table in the student’s hall with a sprig of rosemary in its mouth. The custom of serving a boar’s head on Christmas Day at Queen’s College, whilst the tabarder sang:
“The Boar’s Head in hand bear I
Bedecked with bays and rosemary,
And I pray you masters merry be—
Quotquot estis in convivio.
Chorus—Caput apri defero Reddens laudes Domino,” etc.,
is said to have originated in that incident.
S. Aldate’s Road, after leaving the river, skirted the enclosure of S. Frideswide, and gradually ascended the sloping gravel bank in a northerly direction. Here it was met by another road which, coming from the east, connected Oxford with the Wallingford district. The crossing of these roads came to be known as the Four Ways, Quadrifurcus, corrupted into Carfax. And Carfax was the second of the chief elements in the formation of Oxford. For at this point, as if to mark its importance in the history of the town, was erected S. Martin’s Church, which has always been the city church, and in the churchyard of which Town Councils (Portmannimotes) perhaps were held. It was founded under a Charter of Cnut (1034) by the wealthy and vigorous Abbey of Abingdon, which, together with the foundation at Eynsham, seems to have thrown the Monastery of S. Frideswide very much into the shade both as to energy and influence.
The tower, restored by Mr T. G. Jackson, is the only remaining fragment of the old church. A modern structure was wisely removed in 1896 to broaden the thoroughfare. Two quaint figures, which in bygone days struck the quarters on the old church, have been restored to a conspicuous position on the tower. Shakespeare, who on his way to Stratford used to stop at the Crown Inn, a house then situated near the Cross in the Cornmarket, is said to have stood sponsor in the old church to Sir William Davenant in 1606. John Davenant, father of the poet and landlord of the Inn, was Mayor of Oxford. His wife was a very beautiful woman. Scandal reported that Shakespeare was more than godfather to Sir William. But if the tower be all that remains of the original structure, “S. Martin’s at Carfax” still commands the High Street, and, serene amidst the din of trams, of skurrying marketers and jostling undergraduates, recalls the days when the town was yet in the infancy of its eventful life.
The third element in the formation of the place was the Mound. Mediæval towns usually began by clustering thickly round a stronghold, and there is reason to believe that at the beginning of the tenth century Oxford was provided with a fortress. In the year 912 Oxford is mentioned for the first time in authentic history. For there is an entry in the Saxon Chronicle to the effect that
“This year died Æthelred, ealdorman of the Mercians, and King Edward took possession of London and Oxford and of all the lands which owed obedience thereto.”
The Danes were ravaging the country. Mercia had been over-run by them the year before. The Chronicle for several years presents a record of the Danes attacking various places, and either Eadward or his sister Æthelflæd defending them and building fortresses for their defence. They fortified, for instance, Tamworth and Warwick and Runcorn, and at each of these places the common feature of fortification is a conical mound of earth. Take a tram from Carfax to the railway station, and stop at the County Courts and Gaol on your way. The County Gaol you need not visit, or admire its absurd battlements, but within the sham façade is the tower that remains from the Castle of Robert D’Oigli, and beside the tower is just such a conical mound of earth—the Castle Mound.
Against raids and incursions Oxford was naturally protected on three sides. For the Thames on the west and south and the Cherwell on the east cut her off from the attack of land forces, whilst even against Danes coming up the Thames from Reading, marsh lands and minor streams within the belt of these outer waters protected her. For in those early days, when Nature had things almost entirely her own way, there were many more branches of the river, many minor tributary streams flowing where now you see nothing but houses and streets. The Trill Mill stream, for instance, which left the main stream on the west of what is now Paradise Square, is now covered over for the greater part of its course; whilst the main stream, after passing beneath the road some seventy yards outside South Gate, gave off another stream running due south, parallel with the road to Folly Bridge, but itself evidently continued its own course across Merton Fields by the side of what is now Broad Walk, and finally found its way into the Cherwell. And besides this stream, which ran under S. Frideswide’s enclosure, there were, on the east, the minor streams which now enclose the Magdalen Walks. But what Oxford needed to strengthen her was some wall or fosse along the line occupied afterwards by the northern wall of the city, along the line, that is, of George Street, Broad Street and Holywell, and also some place d’armes, some mound, according to the fashion of the times, with accompanying ditches. With these defences it seems probable that she was now provided. Thus fortified Oxford becomes the chief town of Oxfordshire, the district attached to it. And during the last terrible struggle of England with