Things to do in Oxfordshire

Blenheim Palace near Woodstock in Oxfordshire is one of the most magnificent country houses in Britain and the only non-royal, non-episcopal house in England to hold the title of palace. It was built between 1705 and 1722 as a gift from the nation to John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, in recognition of his decisive victory over the French and Bavarian forces at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, one of the most significant military victories in British history. The house was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh in the English Baroque style on an almost unprecedented scale and represents the most complete expression of the baroque tradition in English architecture. The building's scale is immediately apparent from the main approach through the great forecourt, where the baroque facades and the massive towers of the north front rise above a composition of courts, colonnades and gate towers of extraordinary grandeur. The state apartments within the palace contain one of the finest collections of tapestries, paintings and furniture in any English country house, assembled by successive generations of the Churchill family and filling rooms of lavish opulence appropriate to a palace built by a grateful nation rather than a private individual. The Long Library, the Saloon with its painted ceiling by Louis Laguerre and the state bedrooms all contribute to an interior of remarkable ambition and quality. The park surrounding the palace was redesigned by Capability Brown in the 1760s and represents one of the masterpieces of English landscape design. Brown transformed the formal baroque gardens of the original park into a naturalistic landscape of extraordinary beauty, dammed the River Glyme to create the great lake that occupies the centre of the park and planted the woodlands and grassland that frame the palace and its approach in a composition of apparently natural perfection. Winston Churchill was born at the palace in 1874 and is buried in the nearby village of Bladon; the exhibition devoted to his life within the palace is one of the most visited sections of the visitor offering. Blenheim Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most visited historic houses in Britain.

Burford is one of the finest and most completely preserved Cotswold market towns, a settlement on the River Windrush in Oxfordshire whose long High Street descending steeply to the medieval bridge provides one of the most satisfying townscapes in the English countryside. The combination of the fifteenth-century church of St John the Baptist, the former wool merchant houses of the High Street and the surrounding Windrush Valley landscape creates a destination of exceptional quality and historical depth. The church of St John the Baptist at the foot of the High Street is one of the largest and most richly decorated medieval churches in the Cotswolds, its interior containing elaborate perpendicular Gothic stonework, brasses and monuments of considerable quality and a remarkable collection of seventeenth-century wall tablets. The church has a specific historical association with the Levellers, the radical democratic movement of the English Civil War whose soldiers were imprisoned in the church by Cromwell's forces in 1649 before three of their leaders were shot in the churchyard in the suppression of the Leveller mutiny. The High Street descends between buildings of consistent Cotswold limestone quality from the broad upper market area through progressively steeper and narrower sections to the medieval bridge over the Windrush. The range of independent shops, galleries and the quality of the accommodation available in this relatively small town reflects the sustained popularity of Burford as a destination for visitors who seek the Cotswold experience in a genuinely historic rather than a commercialised context.

Great Tew in Oxfordshire is one of the finest estate villages in England, a settlement of thatched ironstone cottages of the seventeenth century arranged around a village green in a composition of English village perfection that was created by the landscape designer J C Loudon who laid out the Great Tew estate in the early nineteenth century with a comprehensive plan that included the arrangement of the village buildings, the planting of the estate woodland and the improvement of the cottages in a unified aesthetic programme. The result is a village that appears entirely natural but is in fact a designed landscape of considerable sophistication. The ironstone cottages of Great Tew, thatched and draped in climbing plants in a condition of perfect maintenance, provide one of the most photographed and most consistently admired village streetscapes in Oxfordshire. The estate cottages were designed by Loudon with a consistent architectural character that gives the village an unusual unity of appearance, and the subsequent care of the estate has maintained this character against the pressures of modernisation that have compromised similar villages elsewhere. The village pub, the Falkland Arms, is one of the finest traditional village pubs in Oxfordshire, its interior of ancient beams, clay pipes and numerous ales providing the character of a genuinely traditional English inn in a building that has served this function since the sixteenth century. The combination of the village character and the pub creates a destination of considerable appeal for those seeking the authentic English village experience.

Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire is one of the most romantically beautiful ruined manor houses in England, a fifteenth-century hall house on the banks of the River Windrush whose combination of the substantial roofless walls, the dovecote, the medieval church and the peaceful river setting creates one of the most atmospheric and most rewarding small heritage visits in the Cotswolds. The hall was built by William Lovell approximately 1440 and confiscated following the attainder of Francis Lovell after Bosworth in 1485. The ruins retain the walls of the great hall, the solar and the various service buildings in a state of preservation that allows the original layout of a fifteenth-century aristocratic residence to be read clearly. The circular medieval dovecote survives with its interior nesting boxes in remarkable completeness and provides the finest single architectural feature of the remains. The village of Minster Lovell below the hall, with its stone cottages on the Windrush and the village pub, provides an excellent visitor base and the combination of the village, the ruins and the Windrush Way walking makes this one of the finest half-day heritage and landscape destinations in Oxfordshire.

The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world, a collegiate institution whose origins date to at least the twelfth century and whose buildings, traditions and academic culture have shaped intellectual life in Britain and across the world for over eight centuries. The university comprises thirty-eight autonomous colleges spread across the historic city centre, their medieval and later buildings lining the narrow streets and opening onto quadrangles of exceptional architectural quality that make Oxford one of the most architecturally rich cities in England. The architecture of Oxford spans nearly nine centuries of continuous collegiate building, from the Norman tower of St Michael at the North Gate, the oldest building in the city, through the medieval halls and chapels of Merton, New College and Magdalen, the Renaissance classicism of Wren's Sheldonian Theatre, the baroque drama of Hawksmoor's buildings and the Victorian Gothic of Keble College to the modernist contributions of the twentieth century. No other English city outside London offers a comparable range of architectural history in such a compact and walkable area. The public spaces and buildings of the university open to visitors include the Bodleian Library, one of the oldest and most important research libraries in the world whose Divinity School is the finest medieval interior in Oxford, the Radcliffe Camera, the Ashmolean Museum which houses outstanding collections of art and archaeology, and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History with its famous display of the dodo and its cast of an Archaeopteryx. The college chapels of Christ Church, Magdalen and New College each contain outstanding works of art and historical interest. The Oxford University Parks and the Cherwell riverside provide excellent walking, and the tradition of punting on the Cherwell and the Isis remains one of the most pleasurable ways to experience the university city from the water.