Museum of Oxford and Oxford Castle

A few weeks ago, before the flu (I think I'll start measuring time with BF and AF...) I took the kids to the Museum of Oxford and Oxford Castle while Eric went to a few meetings. I had originally intended to only go to the museum, but it turns out to be slightly, well, smaller, than I thought. And what I mean by that is it took us about fifteen minutes total to go through the one and a half rooms of exhibits. The interactive exhibit about the old Jewish quarter of Oxford was unfortunately not working. If it had been, that would have been a nice addition!

Rebecca did enjoy the small hat dress up corner. She sort of hammed it up, in fact:

And a final curtsy from the royal princess (in Croc boots, of course)!

So, after putting all these hats on we were pretty much done with this museum, and I still had two plus hours to kill before Eric would be finished with his meetings. So, I made the executive decision to head to Oxford Castle, which was fortunately right down the street.

The kids ended up loving the castle, even though the tour ran a bit long for Rebecca's taste. I had warned them both in advance they had to be patient and polite even if they got bored, and both kids did a great job doing just that. Nonetheless, they most enjoyed the time they got to explore on their own without the tour guide.

First, we went outside to climb the big hill outside the castle, that used to have a tower on it but now has only the earthen fortifications (and a well) remaining. On the way there, we stopped at the timeline engraved in the sidewalk and followed it from beginning to end.

This part of the timeline says: 1643, Civil War Parliamentarian prisoners are held in St. George's Tower. We learned on the tour that Oliver Cromwell tore most of the original Saxon and Norman walls down because of this. One tower remains from the original 11th century stone Norman structure, which Cromwell left intact because it had a well in it. We climbed it on the tour, and Justin loved the narrow winding stairs, that were intentionally uneven to slow invaders down if they ever breached the walls.

After walking the timeline we climbed the earth fortifications (that used to have a tower on top) outside the castle. The kids liked that you needed a special code to get in the gate (as part of your castle tour ticket). The view from the top stretched pretty far, so we all thought it was worth the climb. Here are the kids starting up the path:

Justin liked the well chamber from the 13th century, which we learned could provide water in case of a siege: 

We had to buy Justin that Oxford sweatshirt because it was so cold and windy and he forgot his jacket in the car. Here are the kids enjoying the view despite the cold:

After we climbed the hill, we went back inside the castle for the tour. The tour guide provided lots of interesting historical tidbits along the way. We climbed St. George's tower, the oldest part of the castle, went into the crypt, and saw a few of the jail cells.

Here are some pictures of the 11th century tower, and the kids at the top, both proud of climbing the hundred and something stairs to get there:

After castles became logistically useless thanks to cannons, Oxford Castle turned into a jail, and was used as such until 1996. Both kids couldn't believe that it closed for sanitary reasons because as late as 1996 prisoners did not have indoor plumbing and had to use buckets...Rebecca was also horrified to learn that the youngest prisoner was a 7-year-old girl jailed in the 1890s for a week because she borrowed a neighbor's stroller to use for her doll. (This story horrifies me, too. I think we as a collective Western society must still be recovering from the emotional damage these sorts of Victorian practices inflicted on children...)

But I digress...All in all, we enjoyed the tour!