For centuries Oxford was the most muddle-headed city in the country when it came to maintaining law and order and administering justice.

This was because two separate legal systems existed side by side: one for Gown and another for Town.

From the earliest days of the university’s existence it had its own court, initially called the Chancellor's Court, but gradually becoming known as the Vice-Chancellor’s Court, with powers to try cases, criminal or civil, that involved members of Oxford University — or, indeed, anyone else Gown had deemed to be ‘privileged persons’; that’s to say tradesmen licensed by the university to serve it. Such people were matriculated by taking an oath of loyalty to the monarch and to the church, and by the 1520s they numbered about a fifth of the city’s taxable population.

Townsmen too often had to appear before the Vice-Chancellor’s Court if they were involved in a dispute or were party to a crime that involved a privileged person.

With Town and Gown continually bickering at each other the university went to huge pains to guard its privileges, which were repeatedly confirmed by royal charters. It appointed a high steward to hear “and determine criminal causes of the gravest kind, such as treason and felony, at the mandate of the Chancellor, and according to the land and the privileges of the university whenever the accused is a scholar or privileged person”.

The University gallows were until the 18th century at the east end of Holywell Street.

It also appointed clerks of the market to hear cases involving such commercial matters as rent disputes, debt and so forth, whenever a privileged person was one of the parties concerned. From earliest times too, the university’s courts concerned themselves with the morals of Oxford’s inhabitants, adopting powers to arrest prostitutes (of whom there were many hanging around the all-male university). Even as late as 1887 the manual issued to bulldogs (the proctor’s men, or university police) stated: “It is one of the most important duties of the proctors to keep the street clear of prostitutes.”

Any caught loitering about were confined in cells beneath the Clarendon Building or even banned from the city altogether.

The Vice-Chancellor’s Court originally heard cases in the Lady Chapel of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin but in 1636 it moved to a new room at the west end of the Divinity School.

Its powers of hearing criminal cases were brought to an end by the Municipal Reform Act of 1835, and by the beginning of the 20th century it had only limited powers to hear civil cases; mainly concerning debt.

By the middle of that century, it had all but ceased to exist.

The kind of muddle that the two parallel court systems caused was exemplified by the case of a carrier called Barnes in 1731.

There seems to have been doubt about whether he was a privileged person or not. The university summoned him before the Vice-Chancellor’s Court but he refused to answer the summons and, according to the historian Thomas Hearne, his case was removed to London where, no one appearing against him, it collapsed.

He re-entered Oxford on his wagon “in a triumphant manner, with a laced hat, as if he designed to insult the university”. It was seen as a rare Town victory that caused many a Gown face to turn red.

Serious criminal cases on the Town side were heard next to the prison in the Shire Hall at Oxford Castle until 1577, the year of the Black Assize when about 300 people, including the Lord Chief Baron, died of gaol fever during the trial of Rowland Jenkes, “a saucy, foul mouthed bookseller, for scandalous words against the Queen”.

After that, assizes were held in the Town Hall and then in the County Hall.

The present combined court building, pictured, in St Aldates, opposite the police station, houses the crown and county courts. It was opened in 1985 by Lord Hailsham, then Lord Chancellor. The building incorporates the facade of the old Morris Motors showrooms, designed by Harry W Smith and built in 1932.