Oxford

I was looking through photos on my computer and came across these ones of Oxford. There is a interesting story of two great women of Oxford in them. The first two are of Church Farm - a small chapel (part of Christchurch) and a farm on the edge a Binsey - of town of maybe 10 houses and a pub. St. Frideswide - the patron saint of Oxford - fled to Binsey in the early middle ages when it was a small village in the forest. She was trying to escape a mercian prince who wanted to marry her. According to legend, God struck this prince blind for his pursuit. When he reached Binsey, St. Frideswide said would restore his sight of she would be left in peace. The prince agreed and St Fridewide cured the prince's sight with water from a well of healing water that is still next to the chapel. The chapel is dedicated to St Margaret - another early English Saint. The well also happens to be the Treacle Well mentioned by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland. Treacle, at that time, refered to a well of healing water in addition to the dessert. The third photo is a picture of the Godstow nunnery - an unexcavated nunnery on the far side of Port Meadow near Oxford. One of the nuns - Rosamund the Fair - was a mistress of the King and her body was laid at the high altar of Osney Abbey with St Fridewides. Rosamund the Fair being laid with a Saint caused a lot of furor a the time, though the abbot of the abbey thought Rosamund was a righteous woman and mixed the bones together so that they were indistinguishable.
The third photo is my friend Sonya on the River Cherwell by Magdalen College. We are punting up the river and smoking weed.
The last is a photo of the Hobgoblin - the public house I worked at in England for almost a year. The cellars are very old - one of my first managers, Andy, told me from they are from the 14th c. The pub is pretty old itself - it was a carriage house and has a carriage passage with a stone courtyard in the back where there are iron rings attached to the ground to thether horses to. We kept bottles in one of the old stables and now a cab company uses the courtyard as a base of operation. After Chistmas when i came back from Amsterdam my first set of managers (Pam and Andy - a married couple) retired from pub work (Andy went to work fulltime for nearby Wychwood Brewery - supplied of the Hobgoblin bars) and the assistant manager, Pete, went to manage his own pub. Skip moved to Cork, Ireland so after a few months of work I ended up being the longest time employee of the pub.