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Isisbridge

Isisbridge club

Posted: 20 Apr 2014

Taken: 07 May 2007

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St Michael in the North Gate •
Saxon •
tower •
old •
historic •
building •
architecture •
tree •
urban •
town •
city •
centre •
street •
Cornmarket Street •
Oxford •
Oxfordshire •
England •
English •
Britain •
British •
UK •
May •
2007 •

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Photo replaced on 19 May 2020
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Northgate Tower, Oxford

Northgate Tower, Oxford
Cornmarket Street, Oxford
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 Isisbridge
Isisbridge club
www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-saxon-tower-at-st-michael-at-the-north-gate-oxford-england

Built around 1000-1050, the Saxon Tower was once part of the original church of St. Michaels Northgate... further up the stairs you spy a cell door from the old Bocardo Prison, which consisted of rooms above the North gate. This is the door to a cell that may have held the prison’s most famous captives, the Oxford Martyrs.

During the 1550s, the deeply religious Queen Mary I (of “Bloody Mary” fame) rejected England’s new Anglican religion, in favor of its old Catholic faith. Those who opposed the switch were imprisoned and often killed. In 1555, Bishop Hugh Latimer, Bishop Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, were all held in Bocardo Prison for refusing to abandon their Protestant faith. All three would eventually be burned at the stake, just outside the north city wall, cementing their place as martyrs of the Anglican faith.

Oxford Martyrs' cell door
5 years ago. Edited 5 years ago.

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