County Towns of England Part 1

 

The centre of Oxford Town

Many of the county towns of England, such as York, Lincoln and Worcester, have actually been cities since time immemorial. So what's the difference between a town and a city? In the late middle ages, a new city would be created by royal charter, and it would generally have to have a cathedral. By the twentieth century things had started to become confused and we had towns with cathedrals and cities without cathedrals; some towns wanted to be cities to enhance their status and it eventually reached point the point where any old towns can apply to become a city. For example Milton Keynes, not much more than 50 years in existence anyway, became a city in 2022 as part of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations! The postcard here depicts Carfax in 1960, which is recognised as the centre of Oxford; in the early 1960's I passed by here every day on my journey to and from school. Apart from the pedestrianisation of many of the roads it has changed little since my day. The WH Smith's branch on Cornmarket Street is still there - I bought my copy of Sgt Pepper's there on its day of release - probably got a detention for being late.

Staying with the music theme in 1962, round about the same time I was on the bus to school going through the centre of the city of Oxford, Bob Dylan was recording one of his finest LP's which included a song entitled 'Oxford Town'. This had nothing whatsoever to do with my Oxford as it was actually referring to Oxford, a town in Mississipi, USA. The song was an account of the riot which broke out when the local university admitted their first black student. 

Girls on the RAZZ!

On our recent trip Vicky was visiting Oxford for a hen party to which I hadn't been invited, so I spent an afternoon rediscovering the backstreets with delight, albeit having to dodge a huge number of tourists from every part of the globe. The girls meanwhile hit the Oxford branch of Brown's Restaurant for a boozy lunch followed by Crazy Golf. I later picked Vicky up and, not having had a drop of ale all day myself, I took her into The Dewdrop Inn in Summertown about a mile out of the city for a pie and a pint - inside the main bar is a plaque proclaiming that this was the local haunt of Colin Dexter, the author and creator of Inspector Morse. 

That morning we'd run round the University Parks in a very busy parkrun - nearly 600 runners galloped three times round the cricket pitch where, in the mid 1960's, I watched Australia playing the university side on the way home from school. That's me hanging on behind the young lad in black, I wasn't quite sure how to pace things, I'd left my barcode at our hotel over a mile from the start so I ran through the finish and back to the hotel to retrieve that precious bit of plastic arriving back to have it scanned just as the final parkrunners were finishing - phew! So, looking back at this post I've described our day rather haphazardly and a little bit back to front but I think you'll agree that we'd packed quite a lot into one day! And at this juncture I'll return to my pondering of the fuzzy boundary regarding the distinctions between towns and cities. When I was young I'd always thought of Oxford as a town and the locals referred to it as a town (e.g. we travelled into the town centre). In fact the phrase 'Town and Gown' originated in Oxford following violent confrontations between students and townspeople back in the 14th century. Fast forward to the 21st century where the people of Reading, who presumably disgruntled that they'd failed to win city status on four occasion no less, have now produced road signs with 'City Centre' written on them! Does it really matter?