History of Oxfordshire

Ascott is a hamlet and manor house in the civil parish of Stadhampton, in the South Oxfordshire district, in the county of Oxfordshire, England. Ascott lies close to the River Thame north-east of Dorchester, about 8 miles (13 km) to the south-east of the centre of Oxford.

"Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross" is an English language nursery rhyme connected with the English town Banbury in Oxfordshire. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 21143.

The Gewisse (ye-WEES-se; Latin: Geuissæ) were a tribe or ruling clan of the Anglo-Saxons. Their first location, mentioned in early medieval sources was the upper Thames region, around Dorchester on Thames. However, some scholars suggest that the Gewisse had origins among the ancient Britons at Cair-Caratauc (Old Sarum) in Wiltshire. According to Saxon folklore, the Gewisse were the founders of the kingdom of Wessex.

The Uffington White Horse is a prehistoric hill figure, 110 m (360 ft) long, formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk. The figure is situated on the upper slopes of Whitehorse Hill in the English civil parish of Uffington in Oxfordshire, some 16 km (10 mi) east of Swindon, 8 km (5.0 mi) south of the town of Faringdon and a similar distance west of the town of Wantage; or 2.5 km (1.6 mi) south of Uffington. The hill forms a part of the scarp of the Berkshire Downs and overlooks the Vale of White Horse to the north. The best views of the figure are obtained from the air, or from directly across the Vale, particularly around the villages of Great Coxwell, Longcot, and Fernham.

The Oxford and Rugby Railway was promoted by the Great Western Railway as a means of connecting to the West Midlands and the north of England, by joining existing railways at Rugby. It was authorised in 1845, but the GWR soon decided to make its own line to Birmingham, and in 1846 it acquired the O&RR; work had not started on its construction. In the same year the GWR obtained an act of Parliament, the Birmingham and Oxford Junction Railway Act 1846, giving authorisation for its Birmingham line. The two railways were treated as a single project, to connect Birmingham and Oxford. In 1850 a single line was opened between Oxford and Banbury, and in 1852 the whole line to Birmingham was opened.

The Oxford, Witney and Fairford Railway was a single track railway branch line, 22 miles (35 km) long, in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. It was opened in succession by two companies, the first in 1861 to connect the important woollen town of Witney to the main line network, and the second in 1873 as the rump of an ambitious scheme to connect to Cheltenham, but which ran only between Witney and Fairford. The junction with the main line was at Yarnton, north of Oxford.

The Oxford Down is a British breed of domestic sheep. It was developed in the 1830s by cross-breeding of Hampshire Down and Southdown ewes with Cotswold rams. It is reared primarily for meat.

Megalosaurus (meaning "great lizard", from Greek μέγας, megas, meaning 'big', 'tall' or 'great' and σαῦρος, sauros, meaning 'lizard') is an extinct genus of large carnivorous theropod dinosaurs of the Middle Jurassic Epoch (Bathonian stage, 166 million years ago) of southern England. Although fossils from other areas have been assigned to the genus, the only certain remains of Megalosaurus come from Oxfordshire and date to the late Middle Jurassic.

Oxford City Police was the police force of the City of Oxford, England. It policed the city from 1 January 1869 until 31 March 1968.

The Emmer Green (Hanover) Chalk Mine is an extensive abandoned subterranean chalk mine at Emmer Green, north of Reading in Berkshire, located just north of the junction of Peppard Road and Kiln Road (OS Grid Ref: SU722769). The mine is so named because the land is now owned by the Hanover Housing Association who have a development adjacent at Wordsworth Court. The mine is one of a number of known mines in the Emmer Green and Reading area where chalk mining was often done in conjunction with brick making as chalk and clay are found together in the area and chalk was use in the making of bricks. It is likely other abandoned mines remain undiscovered. The area was once known as Rose Hill and contained brickfield and chalk mining works.