Churches, pubs and humble pie

Before those particular decades of destruction, too, the more random developments that happened over the centuries also tended to treat such institutions as, to some degree, sacrosanct.

The result is that pub crawling and church crawling go together like horses and carriages when it comes to getting to the roots of how things have turned out the way they have in any particular locality.

Take central Oxford, for instance; here the obvious place to start is at the church of St Michael at the North Gate ... but here, sadly, I must stop to eat humble pie, since a reader of this column has gently pointed out to me by email that I have on several occasions (wrongly) described the church as Oxford’s oldest building, when, in fact, of course, it is only the tower which is so very old. Careless, I am afraid, but at least it has given me an excuse to start looking more closely at all those churches — and pubs — within walking distance of each other at the heart of the city and, in the case of the tower of St Michael at the North Gate, dating back to before the university was even a twinkle in the eye of Henry II or anyone else.

The very earliest teaching in Oxford happened in the Castle in 1096, but nothing resembling a formal university came about until 1167 when Henry banned English students from attending the University of Paris; but the tower of St Michael at the North Gate, the city’s only Saxon edifice, was already standing in 1050, a few years before the Norman Conquest.

It stood, appropriately, at the old north gate in the city walls and acted as a useful look-out tower. It was also famously connected to the Boccardo prison in which the 16th-century Oxford martyr-bishops Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley were locked up before being burned at the stake in the city ditch (now Broad Street).

The rest of the present church was built later, as my reader points out. Well worth exploring though. The chancel as built in the 13th century and the narrow lancet windows at its east end contain Oxford’s oldest stained glass windows, made in about 1290. One piece of glass at the top depicts St Michael the Archangel, after whom the church is named; another, below it, shows the virgin and child; and yet another shows St Edmund of Abingdon (1175-1240), Archbishop of Canterbury, and the first known Oxford master of arts, after whom St Edmund’s Hall is named.

It is lucky for us that these pieces of glass still exist. Not only did they survive the Reformation, and the ravages of Puritanism during Oliver Cromwell’s protectorate, but they were also saved from the flames by parishioners in 1953 when the church was severely damaged in a fire probably started by an arsonist.

Along Cornmarket from St Michael at the North Gate is a pizza parlour now occupying the site of the old Crown Tavern at No 3 Cornmarket (across the street from the present Crown Inn at 59a) where Shakespeare used to stay on his journeys between Stratford and London.

He was godfather to the poet William Davenant, son of the Crown’s landlord and Mayor of Oxford John Davenant (1606-1668), and was, therefore, probably present at William’s christening at St Martin’s, Carfax.

Good pub-church connection there.

Sadly nothing remains of the original St Martin’s, which was even older than St Michael’s, King Canute having granted it to Abingdon Abbey in 1032. Even the tower, which still, of course, stands, is a remnant of a later 13th- century church that was declared unsafe in 1820 and demolished. Its short-lived replacement was also pulled down in 1896 to make way for traffic.

Those are just two of the many churches, or bits of churches, in the city centre. I could go on about the pubs too.

But what is clear is that there is endless scope for anyone taking a staycation in Oxford. Why go away?