History | History / Heritage | Leisure | Homepage

History RSS Feed

Limited Edition and Weekend

Recalling the Mad Parliament of 1258

1:29pm Wednesday 7th March 2012

Famously, Charles II summoned Parliament to Oxford in 1681, and addressed both houses — Lords and Commons — in Convocation House at the Bodleian. Less well known is another Oxford Parliament, held in 1258, and sometimes known as the Mad Parliament, or the First English Parliament. Here it was more a question of Parliament summoning the King, Henry III, to Oxford, than the other way round. For the King was forced to accept the Provisions of Oxford — a set of rules limiting Henry’s power which some say amounted to nothing short of a written constitution.

Extraordinary glimpse of the medieval view of damnation

2:45pm Wednesday 29th February 2012

Enter the church of St James the Great in South Leigh and you suddenly find yourself in a place reminiscent of pre-Reformation England.

House Lined up for a Welcome Revival

3:14pm Wednesday 22nd February 2012

So sad, the sight of that strangely beautiful building at 20 St Michael’s Street, Oxford, known as Vanbrugh House, which the city council has left empty for a decade; good news, therefore, that it will soon become part of a 22-room hotel. But why is it called Vanbrugh House, and how did it come to be built in the first place? According to a 1920 publication by The Oxford Architectural and Historical Society the reason is clear. It states: “There seems no doubt that No 20 St Michael’s Street is a minor work of the great 18th-century architect Vanbrugh, the designer of Blenheim Palace. The enormous Doric order, the apron blocks and heavy keystones to the windows, which have no architraves, are all characteristics of his heavy and monumental manner.”

John Piper: A brilliant recorder of our landscapes

3:13pm Wednesday 15th February 2012

Here we are in the second decade of the 21st century, and the 20th century — the one in which most of us grew up — is already turning into history, something to be viewed from afar, as if from a boat that has weighed anchor.

Have your say

Matthew Arnold's life among 'the dreaming spires'

2:56pm Wednesday 8th February 2012

Isuppose Matthew Arnold, coiner of the phrase “City of Dreaming Spires”, embodies for many of us — who vaguely remember reading bits of him at school — the very essence of Oxford. But some might say that the spirit he affirms is more that of a relatively new Oxford — Victorian, mainly masculine, self confident, empire building — than that conjured up by his other much-quoted description of the place: “Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties.”

Recalling the cult of Bishop Blaze

3:12pm Wednesday 1st February 2012

February 3 is the feast of Bishop Blaze, the patron saint of woolcombers — and for centuries any woman found using her distaff on that day did so under the threat of having it confiscated and burned.

We're knee-deep in history

2:25pm Wednesday 25th January 2012

Can any county be as full of the shades of dead writers as Oxfordshire?

High-tech key to secrets of the past

9:09am Thursday 19th January 2012

Anyone with a computer can fly about in time these days like a butterfly in air. For instance, I clicked Listed Buildings in the vicinity of my home the other day — and came across a Royal Palace that had flourished from the time of King John (1167-1216) until as late as 1614, in which Henry VIII courted Anne Boleyn, and Edward IV (1442-1483) probably first came across his future bride, Elizabeth Woodville, of which I had never before heard.

Marlborough's brave calm in the face of calamity

2:58pm Wednesday 11th January 2012

New year 1712 was not a happy one for the great Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), the commander of the allied forces against the French during the War of the Spanish Succession, and heroic victor of such momentous battles as Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet. He started the year in real trouble.