Binsey, Oxfordshire

Binsey

Parish church of Saint Margaret
Binsey
Binsey shown within Oxfordshire
OS grid reference SP4907
District
Shire county
Region
Country England
Sovereign state United Kingdom
Post town Oxford
Postcode district OX2
Dialling code 01865
Police Thames Valley
Fire Oxfordshire
Ambulance South Central
EU Parliament South East England
UK Parliament

Binsey is a village by the River Thames about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) northwest of the centre of Oxford. It is the opposite side of the river from Port Meadow and about 1 mile (1.6 km) southwest of the ruins of Godstow Abbey.

History

Binsey's most noted feature is the parish church of 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][2] Its fame lies mostly in that just outside its west end and belltower stands St Margaret’s Well, a Grade II Listed Building,[3] which is the model for Lewis Carroll’s ‘Treacle Well’ from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; this is a holy well dedicated to St Frideswide, patron saint of Oxford. According to 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 mediaeval sense of the word ‘treacle’ meaning ‘healing unguent’. The well became a pilgrimage site in mediaeval times.[4]

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 mediaeval 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 Oxford University, which now owns all of the buildings in Binsey, save one.[5] 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.[4]

Binsey features a total of nine listed buildings. As well as St Margaret’s Church and St Margaret’s Well, Binsey has seven other listed buildings:

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.[14]

References

  1. ↑ http://osneybenefice.org.uk/node/4/
  2. ↑ Images of England #245335
  3. ↑ Images of England #245336
  4. 1 2 "Binsey beats off new homes bid", Oxford Times, (3 October 2001)
  5. ↑ "U-turn over pub pleases villagers", Oxford Times (10 October 2002) Archived 7 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ↑ Images of England #245337
  7. ↑ Images of England #245332
  8. ↑ Images of England #245331
  9. ↑ Images of England #245329
  10. ↑ Images of England #245333
  11. ↑ Images of England #245334
  12. ↑ Images of England #245330
  13. ↑ The Perch The Perch Inn
  14. ↑ Hatts, 2005, page not cited

Sources

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