Oxford, Oxfordshire is both a county town and city that is located in the Southeast of England. Two rivers, Thames and Cherwell, pass through the city and meet in the southern parts. Oxford was at one time known as Oxenaforda and was under the occupation of Saxons. The name is a combination of Ford and Ox.
Oxford, Oxfordshire began when the St Frideswides nunnery was built in the eighth century and is mentioned in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. Later, in the tenth century it became a major military town that was raided quite frequently by Danes.
The town is of course most famous for its University of Oxford that seems to have been founded in the twelfth century. The University’s first colleges included University College, Balliol and also Merton. However, in the early parts of the sixteenth century both Cambridge and Oxford were devastated by an epidemic of sweating sickness that put an end to about fifty percent of the two city’s populations in which many dons and students too lost their lives.
It was Henry T Hare that built the Town Hall in the later part of the seventeenth century. However, in the early parts of the twentieth century Oxford began to see industrial growth and so many a publishing and printing industries was born which then became permanent. It was also in this city that the Morris Motor Company was born.
The city was soon to be divided into two main parts with one being the university part and the other was the car town. However, towards the end of the twentieth century the city saw many jobs being lost and British Leyland too began to lose its place as the pride of British automobile industry.
The most famous event in the city’s history was without doubt the day (6th May, 1954) when Roger Bannister ran the mile in less than five minutes and this was achieved by him on the Iffley Road track in Oxford.…