History
The stream was considerably altered in Saxon and early Norman times. There was a mill here even before the castle existed. In the winter of 1142, there was a siege at the Castle. Empress Matilda (aka Queen Maud, 1102–1167), the daughter and dispossessed heir of Henry I, was there during her power struggle with King Stephen (1096–1154). The queen escaped from the castle after her guards lowered her over the walls. She was clothed in a white dress that camouflaged her against the snow. Matilda crept through the enemy lines and across the Castle Mill Stream to escape to freedom.
In the Middle Ages, the stream was used for navigation, at least above Hythe Bridge. During the 16th century, hay, wood, stone, and slate were unloaded at a wharf at Hythe Bridge. When the Oxford Canal was built, it provided an easier route into the centre of Oxford, and in 1795-96 Daniel Harris built Isis Lock to allow Thames river traffic to access the canal wharves. The stream then fell out of use for navigation.
Read more about this topic: Castle Mill Stream
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)