Speaker: Mark Davies

He began by telling us about the earliest references to Welsh history contained in the “Mabinogion”, which he described as a kind of Canterbury Tales based on old Welsh folk stories. He described two books:

“The Red Book of Hergest” a copy of which was in the Library of Jesus College but is now in the Bodleian. This tells the story of Lludd and Llefelys, two brothers. Lludd, the elder brother, inherited the kingship of Britain and founded the city of Caer Lludd (London). Llefelys married a princess from France, and became King there.

“The White Book of Rhydderch” included the earliest text of the Mabinogion which included the subsequent story of Lludd. His country was subject to three scourges:  1. An invasion by the Coraniaid, who were able to hear everything people said or did;  2. Every May Day, there was a terrible scream, leading women to miscarry; and  3.  There was Famine and lack of grain.

Lludd went to France to ask his brother’s advice. His brother told him, for plague no. 1 – to gather a poisonous mixture made from an insect which was harmless to Britons, then to invite the Coraniad to a feast and spray them with this mixture; For plague no. 2 the screaming was believed to be caused by two dragons (red & white) fighting. So he was advised to set a trap in Oxford (the geographical centre of the country), to put the dragons to sleep with a barrel of mead, and take the sleeping dragons to Snowdonia and bury them; For plague no. 3, which was caused by a mighty magician (Merlin?) putting everyone to sleep by magic and stealing the food, Lludd must confront him and keep awake with a vat of cold water. These terrible plagues seem to have ended, so the advice must have been good.

Another source of early history was the “History of the Kings of Britain” written in 1139 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. This described the conflict between the Celts and the Saxons, and the retreat of the Celts into Wales and the West under Vortigern. The Battle of Dyrham was fought between the Celts and the West Saxons. The battle was won by the Saxons and this defeat led to the separation between the Welsh and the Cornish Celts.

Jesus College, Oxford was founded in 1571 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, although the Founder was a Welshman, Hugh Price who was Treasurer of St David’s Cathedral in Pembrokeshire. It is the only Elizabethan college in Oxford. For many years Welsh men and boys constituted the majority of students, and they came from both rich and poor homes. They tended to stand out due partly to their preference for beer rather than wine, and their relative poverty, strength and physicality. This led to their becoming the butt of various student jokes and nicknames, for instance the popular cheap meal of cheese on toast became known as Welsh Rarebit. A well-known story, probably apocryphal, concerned two famous 18th century figures – Richard “Beau” Nash (a Welshman from Swansea and a student in Jesus) and John Wesley (future founder of Methodism). They are said to have met on a narrow pavement, and one refused to give way, saying to the other “I never make way for a fool”, to which the other replied “I always do”, and stood aside (we suspect we know which of the two said what).

The famous and centuries-old Town and Gown riots, that often started around Carfax at the top of the High Street, figured largely in the history of Jesus College. The Welsh students, known for their physicality, were often pitted against the Bargemen from the canal nearby. The Jesus oarsmen have also performed very well in the annual ‘Bumps’ rowing contests among colleges.

Jesus College also figured in the life and thoughts of T E Lawrence, who was born in Caernarvonshire and studied at Jesus and who gained a first class degree in History. In his first year in Oxford he was the first to navigate an underground stream that had been covered over in Medieval times and ran through the middle of Oxford.

Other famous names with Welsh connections in Oxford include J R R Tolkien, who was extremely interested in the Welsh language, and Dylan Thomas who met and took advantage of the historian A J P Taylor. Taylor wrote “I disliked Dylan Thomas more than anyone I have known, and have no desire to preserve his memory.

At our February meeting Alistair Lack made a return visit to the Society to talk about Country Houses in Oxfordshire. He reminded us that in much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries significant numbers of large country houses in Britain were demolished, including thirteen in Oxfordshire in the last hundred years. An exhibition illustrating this loss was staged at the V and A museum in 1975.

Alistair began and ended his presentation with Tusmore House situated a few miles north of Bicester. The original Palladian style house was completed in 1766 for William Fermore and passed through several families before it was eventually demolished in 1964. Tusmore has now been resurrected in a modern interpretation by Sir William Whitfield and built for the businessman Wafic Said in 2000 for £30 million.

In North Oxfordshire stands Rousham the delightful 15 acre estate of the Cottrell Dormer family. The original house was built for the Dormer family in the seventeenth century but the house and grounds we see today is the property modified and extended in the eighteenth century under the influence of the distinguished house and garden architect William Kent. The gardens at Rousham are a particular attraction, representing the first phase of English landscape design. Fine sculptures are displayed in the grounds to enhance a circular walk with ever changing vistas.

We are all somewhat familiar with Blenheim Palace, a veritable National Monument, often used to host visiting dignitaries, most recently the American President Donald Trump. The palace has its origins in a national award from Queen Anne to John Churchill who led the British armies to victory over the forces of Louis XIV in European battles notably at the village of Blenheim in Bavaria. Unfortunately the sums of money available were not well specified and this led to great conflict between Churchill’s wife Sarah and his friend John Vanbrugh, the chosen architect of the very large English Baroque building. Eventually Vanbrugh was released and banned from the property, to be replaced by Nicholas Hawksmore.

The impressive grounds at Blenheim were designed by Capability Brown who in his career was responsible for forty grand estates, including eight in Oxfordshire. Not everyone approved and the Cambridge critic Robert Owen said he hoped to die and go to heaven before Brown improved it! Brown’s masterstroke at Blenheim was to create the magnificent lake by damming the river Glyme with the “ most expensive bridge in Britain “ crossing it.

More evidence of lavish expenditure is the  £3000 Column of Victory in the grounds and the extensive use of Bath stone, for example in the Orangery. Apparently such stone often went missing from the yard to reappear later in Woodstock townhouses. William Kent also makes an appearance at Blenheim in his design for the Chapel.

Alistair next transported us to North West Oxfordshire and the Jacobean gem of Chastleton House, a National Trust property since 1991. The property was little changed in it’s lifetime and many features remain unaltered in four hundred years to give us a time capsule of Jacobean life. Several fine seventeenth century fireplaces adorn the house, having been commissioned to proclaim the wealth and standing of the then owners. Another gem at Chastleton is Bishop Juxson’s bible, used by him at the execution of Charles1. The grounds were famous for the Croquet Lawn and indeed the rules of the game were written down and formalised at Chastleton in 1866 by Walter Whitmore Jones.

The least visited National Trust House is Ashdown House near Lambourne. This modest but delightful seventeenth century country house or hunting lodge was built by the Earl of Craven for Elizabeth of Bohemia, the “ Winter Queen “ (see History Society talk May 2016). She was the aunt of Charles 11 who was a friend of Craven. Unfortunately she died before she was able to visit the Dutch designed house. It seems to be well worth a visit to swell the N.T. numbers.

On Jan 10th Tim Healey gave us a fascinating and entertaining account of the customs associated with May Day celebrations.

First of all he reminded us that the First of May is not only a celebration of Spring, but also a political date, even with revolutionary undertones.

But May Day celebrations have their origins in the pagan rites associated with Flora the goddess of flowers, which began in Roman times and may have been connected to orgies. A painting by Tiepolo of 1745 depicted these rites.

In 1695 Anthony Wood described the celebrations as an invocation of Summer and at this time it was not considered of great significance. However in the period of the Commonwealth many Puritans found the practice abhorrent, and they did their best to suppress any celebration connected with May Day.

Singing from towers became a common custom in Medieval times and was known to take place in Oxford on New College Bell Tower. The urge to bring green things into the towns and indoors was also a feature of these rites and is depicted in a Book of Hours of 1500.  In the Thames Valley the Hawthorn and its blossom were very popular for garlands. It often (but not always) flowered at the appropriate time.

The Celtic Beltane feasts and Valpurgisnacht were also associated with May Day rites.

In 1250 the University banned all Maytime revels and this reflected the tension which developed between Authority and the revellers. But the Church attitude was often ambiguous, partly since the profits from the sale of Church Ale were used to fund church maintenance. The University colleges, too, sometimes hosted the Morris Dancing. In 1605 there was Morris Dancing in front of the King at Christchurch college.

In the 16th century we see the first mentions of Morris Dancing in relation to May Day celebrations, including depictions of men dressed as women (which had been forbidden in the Bible).

The Puritan backlash against Morris Dancing and other forms of popular entertainment originated with the English Church’s break with Rome in the 16th Century. The Bible was the supreme arbiter, and anything that was condemned there was abhorrent to the Puritans. Banbury was a hotbed of Puritanism, and the authorities there forbade all May celebrations. The Royalists considered these things to be harmless. In 1633 St Peter’s Church tried to stop a Garland from coming into the Church. The Maypole was often erected as a provocation to the Puritans.

At the Westminster Assembly in 1644 Maypoles were banned, but at the Restoration, and the return of Charles II, they reappeared.

By the 1740s the revelries around the Maypole had become more “polite” and in tune with the new Romantic sensibility. The dancers began to include women and girls, and small boys blowing horns (the whithorns) as they might have done in the fields while herding cattle and sheep. On Magdalen College Tower the Choir sang the Hymnus Eucharistus.

In the 19th Century, with the Industrial Revolution in full swing, the popular image of the Countryside became more and more idealised, and writers and artists (including Tennyson, Holman Hunt and Ruskin) helped to create the image of May Day revels that we recognise today. The Maypole became an object with ribbons round which people danced, a Garland was brought in, the May Queen appeared (only occasionally with a May King), and songs were written and sung. But still there were more subversive elements, such as Jack in the Green, a man covered from head to foot with greenery, and often accompanied by chimney sweeps.

In the 20th and 21st Centuries the trend towards popular involvement increased, with events such as the Magdalen Bridge celebrations as the Choir sings from Magdalen Tower, followed by further revels up the High Street. This particular event attracts people in huge, sometimes frightening numbers. But on the other hand, May Day is still celebrated in small communities with dances round the May Pole, a Queen of the May, and garlands from the countryside.