Historic Places 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.

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.