Binsey, Oxfordshire

Binsey is a small village just to the west of Oxford, England, in modern times encompassed within the city's ring road. It is the other side of the River Thames from Port Meadow, and a couple of miles south-west from the remains of Godstow priory.

Its most famous feature is the church of St Margaret, set at some distance north from the surviving houses. Its fame lies mostly in that, just outside its west end and belltower, stands the model for Lewis Carroll's 'Treacle Well' from Alice in Wonderland; this is a holy well dedicated to St Frideswide, patron saint of Oxford. She had 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 something of a focus for pilgrimage, the mediaeval sense of the word 'treacle' meaning 'healing unguent'.

The reason for the apparent separation of church and village is revealed best from the air; crop-marks 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.

The village also contains a large 17th-Century thatch-roofed country public house [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/oxfordshire/6637107.stm] , 'The Perch' [http://thames.me.uk/s01830.htm] , which was extensively damaged by fire in 1977 and again in May 2007. [http://archive.oxfordmail.net/2007/6/28/163278.html] Sept 2008: The Perch has re-opened. [http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/yourtown/oxford/3685629.Perch_reopens_after_blaze/]

Gallery

External links

* [http://www.adiutorium.org.uk/about/st-margarets-binsey/ St Margaret's Church, Binsey website]