Oxford

Sister cities

• Leiden
• Benevento
• Catania
• Grenoble
• Perm
• Padua
• Bonn
• Ramallah

History

The history of Oxford dates back to its original settlement in the Saxon period. The name “Oxford” comes from the Old English Oxenaforda, meaning “ford of the oxen,” referring to a shallow crossing in the river where oxen could pass. The town was of strategic significance, because of the ford and the town's controlling location on the upper reaches of the river Thames at its confluence with the river Cherwell. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, Norman lord Robert D’Oyly built Oxford Castle in 1071 to secure control of the area. Tensions sometimes erupted between the scholastic community and the town; in 1209, after a townsperson hanged two scholars for an alleged murder, a number of Oxford academics fled and founded Cambridge University. Town-and-gown conflicts continued, culminating in the St. Scholastica Day Riot of 1355 – a feuding that lasted days and left around 93 students and townspeople dead. Oxford was besieged during The Anarchy in 1142. During the Middle Ages, Oxford had an important Jewish community, of which David of Oxford and his wife Licoricia of Winchester were prominent members. The university rose to dominate the town. A heavily ecclesiastical town, Oxford was greatly affected by the changes of the English Reformation. Its ecclesiastical institutions were dismantled; the city’s monasteries were closed in the 1530s. Religious strife touched Oxford directly during the Marian persecution; the Oxford Martyrs were tried for heresy here. Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burned at the stake in Oxford in October 1555, and the former Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was executed in March 1556. A Victorian-era monument, the Martyrs’ Memorial in St Giles’, now commemorates these events. Oxford was elevated from town to city status in 1542 when the…

Geography

Carfax Tower is usually considered the centre of Oxford. The city lies north-west of Reading, north-east of Swindon, east of Cheltenham, east of Gloucester, south-west of Milton Keynes, south-east of Evesham, south-east of Worcester, south of Rugby and west-north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames (also known locally as the Isis, supposedly from the Latinised name ) run through Oxford and meet south of the city centre. These rivers and their flood plains constrain the size of the city centre. Oxford has a maritime temperate climate (Köppen: Cfb). Precipitation is uniformly distributed throughout the year and is provided mostly by weather systems that arrive from the Atlantic. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Oxford was on 24 December 1860; the highest was on 19 July 2022. The average conditions below are from the Radcliffe Meteorological Station. It has the longest series of temperature and rainfall records for one site in Great Britain; these have been continuous from January 1815. Irregular observations of rainfall, cloud cover and temperature exist since 1767. The city's climate records are: * the driest year on record was 1788, with of rainfall * the driest month was April 1817 with of rainfall * the wettest year was 2012, with * the wettest month was September 1774 with a total fall of * the warmest month was July 1983, with an average of * the coldest month was January 1963, with an average of * the warmest year was 2022, with an average of * the coldest year was 1879, with a mean temperature of * the sunniest month was May 2020, with 331.7 hours * the least sunny was December 1890, with 5.0 hours * the greatest one-day rainfall occurred on 10 July 1968, with a total of * the greatest known snow depth was in February…

Most-observed species

• Common Wood-Pigeon

  Columba palumbus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  21,256
• European Robin

  Erithacus rubecula (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  17,770
• Carrion Crow

  Corvus corone Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  16,480
• Eurasian Blackbird

  Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  16,319
• Eurasian Magpie

  Pica pica (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  16,192
• Eurasian Blue Tit

  Cyanistes caeruleus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  15,921
• Red Kite

  Milvus milvus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  14,640
• Western Jackdaw

  Coloeus monedula (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  13,888

Most recent

• M 3.2 — 2022-02-21
  5 km N of Hockley, United Kingdom
• M 3.1 — 2020-09-22
  5 km N of Aylesbury, United Kingdom
• M 3.9 — 2020-09-08
  2 km WSW of Pitstone, United Kingdom
• M 3.3 — 2019-02-27
  3 km SE of Dorking, United Kingdom
• M 2.8 — 2018-07-05
  1 km S of Ewhurst, United Kingdom
• M 2.6 — 2018-06-27
  5 km W of Capel, United Kingdom