Not to be confused with the Freemasons, the Oxford Freemen are an ancient guild that has been crucial to the city’s development since Saxon times. It continues to have a role in overseeing Port Meadow in contemporary Oxford, so Esther Lafferty caught up with the organisation’s Chair, Peter Smith, to find out more.
“The Oxford Freemen are Oxford's oldest organisation, predating the University by several hundred years, and we're very proud of that history,” says Peter. “Whilst Oxford is famous as a university city, much of its commercial growth owed a lot to the Oxford Freemen and the lively trade associated with the ‘town’ as well as the ‘gown’. Freemen were responsible for running the civic functions of the city for centuries, and only Oxford Freemen were able to trade or run a business within the city walls. On a quirkier note, Freemen in the 16th century were required to each buy a leather bucket for firefighting purposes.”
Before 1835, only Freemen could trade, vote in City Council elections and hold public office. Then, after the Municipal Corporations Act reformed local government, establishing democratically elected town councils, their influence on politics and trade began to wane.
Oxford Freemen of note include the first English aeronaut (balloonist), James Sadler, who lived in and flew from Oxford in October 1784. “As well as being a pastry cook, based out of a shop in High Street Oxford (now the Grand Café), Sadler was an enthusiastic scientist, who had contacts in the University who supported his ambition. His grandfather, father and one of his sons were Freemen too,” says Peter.
“There are three routes to becoming an Oxford Freeman,” he continues. “The first, and by far the most common, is familial. You can become a Freeman if you are the family member of a current or past Freeman. Although our records of admitted Freemen only date back to 1663, you can see the line of Oxford family names like Gibbs, Cox, Chaundy, Earl and Eeley. And I’m pleased to say women – namely daughters and granddaughters – have been admitted since 2008. Our rules of admission are overseen by the Privy Council.”
The second route into the Freedom of Oxford is as the apprentice of an Oxford Freeman. Before Covid, the Freemen had supported apprenticeships across the whole of the Oxford population with awards and prizes. As apprenticeships remain popular, the Freeman are keen to resurrect their recognition of this long-standing initiative.
Historically, Freemen would have been born and lived in Oxford. However, because many Freemen’s children have relocated far afield, particularly over the last 100 years, there are now Oxford Freemen scattered far and wide, from across the UK to Canada.
Peter himself spent his childhood in the North East and moved to Oxford in 2001. He was invited to become a Freeman by former Oxford Mayor Colin Cook in 2019. “Each Lord Mayor, whether or not they’re a Freeman themselves, can nominate someone to become a Freeman, a third route known as the Lord Mayor's Childe,” he explains, “As a huge enthusiast for Port Meadow, I was delighted to be nominated. Port Meadow is the main interest of the Freeman these days.”
Although trade and civic duties were the Freemen’s main activities for centuries, today the safeguarding of this much-loved 340 acre/137 hectare river meadow, managed by the council, is their primary focus.
“One of the key benefits of being an Oxford Freeman was that you could graze your animals on Port Meadow and fish in the River Thames along the meadow. The Oxford Freemen continue to be the Beneficial Owners of the meadow, and those rights still exists today,” Peter continues.
“These days there are about forty horses who live on the meadow all year, and around 250 cows that stay until late autumn. There is an annual cattle count when the Sheriff – a council role –instigates a dawn ‘roundup’. They would be herded from the bottom of Port Meadow, now to a pound at the top end but originally over the bridge in Wolvercote, past The Trout pub, to Godstow Abbey.”
A fantastic place for ecologists, botanists and birdwatchers, as well as walkers and runners, Port Meadow is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, home to several rare species of plants including the endangered Creeping Marshwort, a small low-lying plant with delicate white umbels that only grew in this location until recently. It is also a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
“Port Meadow was granted to the Freemen by King Alfred and that ownership is mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1086, but its history is far older. There are Bronze Age burial mounds and Iron Age settlements. There are also remnants of Civil War Parliamentarian siege defences when Oxford was briefly the Royalist capital of England,” Peter explains.
“More recently, nationally significant horse racing was held here from 1680 to 1880 on four racecourses, the most pleasing of which was two miles long in the shape of a teardrop. The landed gentry would have filled the grandstands, and the Oxford Freemen would have been involved in running the commercial booths,” he adds.
Port Meadow also played its part in more recent history: “During the First World War, there was a large military flying training aerodrome at the north end of the meadow. 17 young airmen were killed in flying accidents, and they are now commemorated with a memorial stone erected in May 2018, on the centenary of the death of George Thomson, a combat veteran who was only 20 when he died there”, Peter tells me.
“The meadow is also the site of a famous Second World War bridge format – the Bailey Bridge, a prefabricated “temporary” bridge – spanning the river from the Thames Path, and parts of the meadow were used as allotments and landfill sites. We did a geophysical survey of the airfield site, about 3% of the meadow, a few years ago, but there’s so much more history to discover. I’d love for that survey to be expanded one day.”
On Port Meadow, by Artweeks photographer Jenny Blyth
I never tire of Port Meadow and have walked daily whatever the weather for years. I love the huge skies and stepping onto the meadow that stretches towards Oxford, it presents like an old Dutch master, an ever-changing canvas. It is large enough to lose yourself in nature, to embrace the elements, and familiar enough to allow a quiet meditation.
The seasons transform the landscape, shape-shifting and refreshing the palette. There is invariably something unexpected and beautiful to observe whether a young hawthorn tree valiant against the gathering storm, or a tern, light winged and delicate, hovering before the last dive on a summer’s evening. Gun-metal skies threaten thunder above a buttercup sea in June, while hoar frost crystallizes the floodplains under apricot winter skies where hoof print hollows break the ice. The horses and their foals winter on the meadow - they don’t seem to mind the cold, their coats thick and soft.
Banner image: Gathering Storm by Jenny Blyth, May 2025
