We were in Oxford and stopped to admire, wonder at and photograph St Michael’s Tower at the North Gate. it dates from Anglo-Saxon times, built about a thousand years ago. it has its name for very obvious reasons, it is the city church for Oxford, dedicated to St Michael, and is on the site of what was the old city walls. Now it is where Ship Street runs into Cornmarket Street.
The tower is the oldest building in Oxford, and inside it you can see a door which led into the Martyr’s Cell, a cell where Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and Thomas Cranmer, were held awaiting execution by being burned at the stake for heresy in 1555 and 1556.
The first time I ever came to Oxford was to see the Mavericks… it was on 23rd April 2004. As I was wandering round on a beautiful sunny afternoon, I saw Robert Reynolds the bass guitarist also wandering. He stopped by the tower and read the inscription, and put his hand on the old stones. he wandered away and I went and had a coffee, in a bookshop of course!
Lois Elsden 
Didn’t they strangle you before they lit the fire if you repented?
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I think they may have done… another thing they did was tie a bag of gunpowder round your neck which would explode when things hotted up… oh horrid horrid horrid… I read about it in the latest C.J.Sansom book ‘Lamentation’ which is a Tudor murder mystery
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What about dunking witches? If you survived being drowned by being dunked that meant that you were a witch and you were burned at the stake. Talk about a no-win situation. A lot of people that were thought to be possessed were actually hallucinating from eating the fungus ergot from rye. Have you ever heard the story of the church with the crooked spire in Chesterfield? very interesting!
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I’ve seen the Chesterfield spire… we used to go past it before there were motorways and we went up to visit friends in Nottingham… I don’t know the story!
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It seems the spire got bent trying to get a look at a virgin that was getting married because that was so rare. The only way it will get straight again is if another virgin gets married in the church so the story goes. The real reason is that after the plague a lot of the skilled tradesmen had died and so the job got botched and they left it that way.
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LOL, love your stories, David! Do you know when the church was built – it’s lasted well with its twisted spire!
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The spire was added to the church in 1362 shortly after the black plague. The most popular song during the black plague was. “Throw out your Dead” by Gary and the Ghouls. It top the charts for months.
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I think the Zombies did a cover version 😉
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