Binsey, Oxfordshire
| Binsey | |
| Oxfordshire | |
|---|---|
 Parish church of Saint Margaret | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SP492076 |
| Location: | 51°45’56"N, 1°17’16"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | Oxford |
| Postcode: | OX2 |
| Dialling code: | 01865 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Oxford |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Oxford West and Abingdon |
Binsey is a small village on the west side of Oxford, in Oxfordshire. It stands on the banks of the River Thames about a mile and a half north-west of the centre of Oxford, on the opposite side of the river from Port Meadow and about a mile south-west of the ruins of Godstow Abbey.
History
Binsey's most noted feature is the parish church, St Margaret, set at some distance north of the surviving houses. It dates from the 12th century and is a Grade I Listed Building. [1] Its fame lies mostly in that just outside its west end and belltower stands St Margaret's Well, a Grade II Listed Building,[2] which is the model for Lewis Carroll’s ‘Treacle Well’ from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; this was reputed a holy well dedicated to St Frideswide, patron saint of Oxford. According to the mediaeval legend, she fled to Binsey in a bid to escape marriage to a king of Mercia, whose pursuit of her was halted when he was struck blind at the gates of Oxford. Frideswide's prayers brought forth a healing spring, whose waters cured his blindness, and the spring was walled into a shallow well which became a focus for pilgrimage, the mediæval sense of the word ‘treacle’ meaning ‘healing unguent’. The well became a pilgrimage site in mediæval times.
The reason for the apparent separation of church and village is revealed best from the air; cropmarks show the floor-plans of houses that lay along the straight road that runs between them, suggesting a much larger village during the mediæval period, or possibly one that has ‘migrated’ south.
The village and its associated farmland belonged to St Frideswide's Priory during the 14th and 15th centuries, until the priory's dissolution and (apparently) incorporation into Christ Church, a college of the University of Oxford, which now owns all of the buildings in Binsey, save one.[3] Plans in 2001 by Christ Church to double the size of the village by demolishing a barn and constructing seven new residences were met with worldwide protests, leading to withdrawal of the proposal.
An avenue of poplars in Binsey was made famous by Gerard Manley Hopkins in his poem ‘Binsey Poplars’, written when he found the riverside trees felled. The replacements for these trees, which stretch from Binsey to Godstow, lasted until 2004, when the present replantings began.[4]
Gallery
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Road through Binsey village -
At Binsey, near Oxford (1862), by George Price Boyce -
St Margaret's Well, Binsey -
"The Perch" at Binsey
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Binsey, Oxfordshire) |
References
- ↑ National Heritage List 1047335: Church of St Margaret (Grade I listing)
- ↑ National Heritage List 1369348: St Margarets Well with arch and steps (Grade II listing)
- ↑ "U-turn over pub pleases villagers", Oxford Times (10 October 2002) Template:Webarchive
- ↑ Hatts, 2005, page not cited
- Hatts, Leigh (2005). The Thames Path. Cicerone Press. ISBN 978-1-85284-436-3.
- Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire, 1974 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09639-2