Oxfordshire Historical Facts

In 2014 the market town of Wantage won the award for 'Britain's Best Town Centre' after being nominated for the Government's Great British High Street Award.

St. Giles Church in the small picturesque village of Hampton Gay, Oxfordshire, houses one of the oldest bells in England, dating to the mid-13th-century.

In 849, King Alfred the Great was born in the market town of Wantage, Oxfordshire. He was one of only two kings to be given the epithet "The Great", the other being King Canute.

C. S. Lewis died the same day that J F Kennedy was assassinated 22nd November 1963.

The market town of Abingdon, in Oxfordshire, lays claim to the title 'Britain's oldest continuously occupied town'.

The village of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, is the home of French chef Raymond Blanc's restaurant and hotel, Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons.

The first dinosaur bone was discovered in a limestone quarry at Cornwell village, near Chipping Norton in 1676. It was analysed by Robert Plot at the University of Oxford, who concluded it to be a thigh bone of one of the giant humans mentioned in the Bible. It has since been identified as belonging to a Megalosaurus. It was Richard Owen, however, who in 1842 truly identified dinosaur bones and invented the word 'Dinosaur'.

The 'Inklings' were a group of 19 men who frequented the Eagle and Child Public House in St Giles, Oxford to discuss each others literary works, which included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.

Sir Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, in Woodstock, England. He was Prime Minister from 1940-45 and 1951-55.