Ashmolean Museum; Oxford Castle – Joel’s Journeys & Jaunts

To start my only full day in Oxford, I visited the Ashmolean Museum and Oxford Castle.

On my way to and between them, Oxford reminded me of what I discovered when I arrived yesterday afternoon: what a lovely city Oxford is. I walked a bit along Oxford’s high street, cleverly named High Street, mainly because my hotel is on it. And it was, unsurprisingly, as attractive as it was yesterday.

My walk also took me along a quieter street with what looked like residential buildings. They were low-rise and painted in muted tones. It was quite charming.

One sight that I passed a couple of times yesterday was an enclosed, stone, pedestrian bridge between two buildings and over a road. The first time I saw it, I thought to myself, “Wow, except for the fact that it is over a road and not a canal, that bridge looks exactly like what I remember of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, Italy.”

When I passed the bridge the second time yesterday, I was with someone who pointed to it and said, “That’s called the Bridge of Sighs.” He didn’t know about the Venice connection or why it was called that.

I took a picture of it today.

Ashmolean Museum

The Ashmolean Museum is a cornucopian treasure chest of art and ancient artifacts (or, in some cases, casts of ancient artifacts). It has everything but the kitchen sink. Okay. That’s a wee bit of exaggeration. In addition to not having the kitchen sink, it doesn’t have kitchen appliances, automobiles, personal electronics, impersonal electronics, aircraft, modern furniture, …

Well, alright. There’s almost infinitely more that the Ashmolean Museum doesn’t have than what it does have. But if it’s related to art or archaeology, there’s a good chance the museum has at least a few examples from a variety of vintages and geographies of almost any category of items you can imagine.

My walking tour app (GPSmyCity) tells me that the Ashmolean Museum was established in 1678 to house the cabinet of curiosities donated by Elias Ashmole. It claims to be the world’s first university museum.

However, it’s not in its original building. They ran out of space to house the growing collection at the old building. It relocated only recently, namely in 1845. Yeah, not exactly recent in North American terms. But this is jolly old England, innit?

Some of the galleries contain archaeological artifacts from as early as 4000 BCE. There are also pieces from ancient Greece, the Middle East, pre-Roman Italy, Roman Italy, and Asia. Those aren’t quite as old, but many are from a few centuries before and a few centuries after the boundary between BCE and CE.

In the pre-Roman Italy section, I learned that, rare elsewhere for that time and still well beyond that time, Etruscan women were equal to men in many respects. They were equal under the law and in their participation in various aspects of society. And Etruscan women could reach the top echelons and become wealthy in their own right. Plus, they could be buried in ornate tombs, taking some of their wealth with them into their afterlife.

Quite progressive, I’d say, for a society that reached its peak around 500 BCE. Then again, look where it got them. How many Etruscans do you see out on the streets these days? Although, come to think of it, I wouldn’t recognize an Etruscan as such even if I literally bumped into one on the street. So, who knows?

One room, the Cast Room, at the Ashmolean Museum contains casts of famous Greek and Roman statues and relief sculptures, the originals of which reside in other museums.

When it comes to paintings, the Ashmolean Museum has a series of rooms that cover art up to 1800, and other rooms that cover beyond 1800 to the 20th century. The vast majority of these paintings were from European artists, with the paintings organized by country.

There is also a room with a collection of stringed musical instruments of a variety of types.

In addition, the Ashmolean contains rooms with various silver and ceramic tableware, vases, and other items, along with a collection of old coins. There’s also an amazingly decorated 19th-century bookcase.

When I was there, there was a special exhibit of contemporary art, i.e., 21st century, by one artist, Daphne Wright, an Irish sculptor.

I go to a lot of museums when I travel because that’s what one does, right? Nevertheless, I’m not really much of a museum person. That notwithstanding, the collection at the Ashmolean Museum was more than varied and compelling enough to keep me interested during my time there.

Oxford Castle

When I arrived in Oxford yesterday, as I walked from the train station to my hotel, I passed an improbably cone-shaped, grass-covered hill, probably the equivalent of a few storeys high. A fence around the base of the hill sported large signs promoting the Oxford Castle & Prison.

I saw just the hill. I didn’t see anything that looked even vaguely like a castle or prison. I was lugging my wheeled suitcase and wearing my backpack, so I didn’t take any time to explore further then.

The Oxford Castle is listed as one of the must-sees in Oxford. So I went there after I left the Ashmolean Museum.

The castle is, indeed, there, obscured by the hill in front of it.

Oxford Castle was built in 1071 for William the Conqueror. The hill out front was a defensive feature of the castle. Visiting the castle today requires going on a guided tour for a fee.

To make sure it was strong enough to keep enemies out, the castle was built with three-metre (nine feet) thick walls. Eventually, they realized that if the walls were good at keeping people out, they would also be good at keeping people in. Consequently, they began to use it as a prison. The first prisoners were confined there in the 1230s. At some point (I’m not sure when), it became used exclusively as a prison, including as a hard labour prison for a period. It remained an active prison until as recently as 1996.

Oxford Castle has a tower, St. George’s Tower. After the guide provided an introduction, the first activity was to climb the 101 steps of the narrow, tightly spiralling staircase to the top. There is a small room about 40 steps up. The guide took a short break there to provide some more information and give the weary climbers (there were three of us plus the guide) a bit of a rest before climbing the final steps.

Before starting the climb from the bottom, the guide warned us to watch our steps, as the stairs were built unevenly. They were known as the Norman trip steps. They were intentionally uneven with the idea being that if invaders raced up them with their swords, they would trip and impale themselves. Lovely.

In truth, the steps aren’t particularly hazardous now. There’s now wood attached to the top of each step, levelling them off. I guess they have qualms about killing paying customers.

At the top of the tower, there’s a viewing platform that’s another roughly ten steps up. I don’t know if those steps are included in the 101 count or in addition to them.

The 360° views of Oxford, the hills of to one side of it, and the rest of the landscape are spectacular.

The tour also went into the tower’s crypt, which was used to store bodies until they could be buried. There used to be a chapel above the crypt, but it was destroyed during the English Civil War. The rubble buried the crypt, and it was rediscovered only much later (I forget when).

The crypt was rebuilt using prison labour. It currently has the four intricately carved Norman columns. But the guy in charge of the reconstruction had two more added. Being made by relatively unskilled carvers, they lack the intricate carving of the originals.

Finally, the tour went into some of the prison cells. There, the guide gave us some information about the sorts of harsh punishments the prison imposed in addition to mere incarceration in the days before more modern prison reform. She also told us about some of the more notable prisoners who’d been held there.

The ticket seller at the castle and prison wrote a numeric code on the ticket receipt. That code got me through the otherwise locked gate in front of the path leading up the hill to the castle/prison.

I climbed the path, which has some hairpin turns to reduce the slope. The top of the hill is not as high as the top of St. George’s Tower, and the views were uninspiring, with some of the views eclipsed by nearby buildings.

Oh, well. At least my Fitbit was happy about how many uphill steps I took this morning. I like to keep my Fitbit happy. I fear it will turn on me if I don’t.