Oxford and Lewis: Part 2: Tea and Dungeons

At Oxford Castle, Joseph and I had our first tea and crumpets. Ok, not really, it was herbal tea and a "Flapjack."  :-) But YUMMY!!  Now in America, flapjacks are just another name for pancakes, right? Well in England, they are little squares of oatmeal, sweet yumminess! Think of the best oatmeal cookie you have ever tasted, and times it by 3. I am obsessed! must.find.recipe!

Then we went off to the tour. The oldest part of Oxford Castle is from 1071 (yes, the year!) and at least part of it has been a prison from then until 1996! (not sure how I feel about that)

The beginnings of Oxford started in c.700 by the Saxons. In 1009 it was attacked by the Danes and then the Norman Conquest began in 1066. So in 1071 the first part of the castle was built. In fact, in 1135 Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his "History of the Kings of Britain" while staying at the castle. This "History" is the oldest record of King Arthur, Merlin and the Knights of the Round table! yep...written here.
There is SO much history here. The tour guides are dressed as characters that had some connection to the place, like Monmouth. Our guide was a cute domestic Servant named Anne Green from the 1600's.

She was kind of "set up" by a Lord nearby because of a "pregnancy" that didn't go well, and she was hung. She hung for a half hour, not dead yet, the guards hit her in the chest, and pulled on her to tighten the rope, to get her to hurry up. When she finally "died," they took her body to "autopsy" it (that was something they did around here, for research), just as they were about to cut her open, she took a deep breath and opened her eyes! Talk about FREAK OUT! They said that she "survived her own hanging" and was revered when she could tell of her near-death experience and heaven.  

There wasn't much humanity (contrary to the picture above) given to the prisoners. There are pictures of prisoners around, and some of them were as young as 7 years old, lots of 12-14 year olds. Usually for stealing bread or a "leather strap." Curious about why they would want that.  One of the main things they did during the day was walk around pushing a huge wheel. (Remember Les Mis?) But the wheel did nothing. Not even grind wheat, or move water. It was just to wear down the prisoners. You can see in the following picture how the constant walking warped the floor. I would have gone crazy.

The ridges worn into the floor from the prisoners' walking in circles.

It was an incredibly huge place, with centuries of history changing and adding on, creating a maze of up narrow spiral stair cases, down to the Norman crypt in the basement.

Anne put Joseph in the Stocks!

...and left him there for a little bit!

 The "Norman" part of the castle is found in the bottom level. When they attacked the Saxons, the took over for a little bit. I was fascinated with the level of architecture and stonework here. I always thought of the Saxons and Normans as living in stick huts and being sort of middle-ages-primitive. But it was very elegant. The wall behind Joseph (above) is a burial crypt full of Norman bones. Pretty cool.

Part 3 next: The City...