About the year 900, the Saxon inhabitants of Oxford built an earth rampart round their settlement to protect it from marauding Danes. One stone building that survives from the period is the tower of the church which stood at the north entrance to the ramparts, the present St Michael at the North Gate. In 1986 the tower was restored and opened to the public as a tourist attraction where the church treasury, the clock and the bells may be seen and from whose roof there is a fine view of the city.

The Normans replaced some parts of the ramparts with a wall, and near the West Gate (which stood in what is now Paradise Street) they built Oxford Castle, of which the motte and the Tower of St George still survive. The West Gate itself stood until the seventeenth century, its name now remembered only as a shopping precinct.

The site of the East Gate is now marked by the Eastgate Hotel at the east end of High Street, where a large cartouche at first floor level facing High Street shows the Gate as it was shortly before it was demolished in 1777.

Vestiges remain of some smaller gates in the city wall:

-The site of Little Gate, at the junction of Littlegate Street, Brewer Street and St Ebbe's Street, is marked with a handsome plaque:

This is the site of the former Littlegate sometimes known as Little South Gate first mentioned in 1244 and one of seven medieval gates of the City of Oxford. Excavations in 1971 and 1972 uncovered footings of the west side of the gate and the 13th century city wall.

-At the north end of Catte Street stood Smith Gate with its own Chapel of Our Lady. Nothing of the Gate remains, but the octagonal Chapel was restored in 1924-25 by Sir Thomas Jackson as part of Hertford College. Above the south door is an incomplete stone carving depicting the Annunciation, a relic of the original Chapel.

-Another small gate stood until 1722 at the north end of Turl Street where access to the city was through a turnstile or 'twirling-gate', from which the present street gets its name.

Each main gate had its own church. As well as the North Gate having one dedicated to St Michael, the guardian angel, South Gate also had a Michael's, demolished in 1525 to make room for Christ Church. The churches at both East and West Gates were dedicated to St Peter, keeper of the other Gate through which it was believed all mortals must one day pass. St Peter- in-the-East remained a parish church until the 1960s when it was converted into a library for St Edmund Hall, and near the West Gate was the church of St Peter-le-Bailey (i.e. near the bailey, or outer wall, of the Norman castle). The original St Peter-le-Bailey stood where the Baptist Church now stands in Bonn Square, but the church was resited in the nineteenth century and has now become the chapel of St Peter's College.

Much of the wall remained as an earth rampart until the thirteenth century when it was strengthened, and the remaining sections of rampart were replaced by stone. In the same century, the wall between Smith Gate and East Gate was reinforced by an outer wall which has now disappeared.

After the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century, much of the north-east corner of the city, behind the double wall, was left derelict, and the City authorities were glad to let William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, develop the land for his 'New College' in 1379. A condition imposed on him was that the College should maintain the north-east part of the city wall. The result today is that the part of the wall in New College is by far the largest and best preserved section of the whole city wall to survive. Every three years, the Mayor and Sheriff of Oxford make a ritual inspection of the wall in the grounds of New College to ensure that the stipulations of their fourteenth-century predecessors are still being observed. .

When Oxford was used as the headquarters of the Royalist army during the Civil War, the wall was no longer in a condition to provide adequate defence. Between 1643 and 1645, new ditches, ramparts and palisades were constructed outside the old walls, and earthworks were dug to divert the River Cherwell in order to flood the meadows. The palisades have gone. but the flood-works may still be seen in the part of University Parks known as Mesopotamia. The loyalty of the Royal army was not always matched by that of the citizens, some of whom demonstrated their sympathy with the Parliamentarian cause by pulling down at night defenses erected by the Royalists during the day.

Parish boundaries

Parish boundary-marks usually take the form of a cross marked on a wall, sometimes with the initial letters of the parish and the date. Some crosses are incised in the stone, some are of metal, and others are only marked on the wall with chalk. The traditional way of making sure that boundaries are remembered is to hold annually on Ascension Day a ceremony known as 'beating the bounds', at which the vicar and surpliced choir tour the parish boundary with sticks with which they 'beat' the boundary-marks, often marking them with chalk, and sometimes accompanying the beating with the words "Mark! Mark!" This ceremony is still observed in at least two parishes in Oxford, St Mary the Virgin and St Michael at the North Gate.

Since parishes are often older than the buildings within them, boundaries can run through existing properties. Boundary-marks are therefore sometimes indoors and sometimes inaccessible to the general public. There is, for instance an accessible boundary-mark in Marks and Spencer's store in Queen Street, and and inaccessible one in a passage near the kitchen in Oriel College. The boundary-marks listed below are those that are observable in Oxford without trespass. The list may not be complete and does not include marks that are merely chalked on a wall.

New Inn Hall Street

- on the wall of No.40 opposite St Peter's College

St M / St P le B 1933) [St Michael / St Peter le Bailey]

St Michael's now includes the former parishes of St Martin (Carfax) and of All Saints (now Lincoln College Library).

- in a brick wall near a mulberry tree in the back quad of St Peter's College

St P le B / St M 1929

- a cross on the wall in the courtyard behind the building on the corner of George Street and New Inn Hall Street, down the steps below the metal fire-escape staircase.

Queen Street

- in Marks & Spencer's store. A cross on the floor and an inscribed stone in a glass case nearby:

(John Edward Cammel placed this sacred stone here 1952) .

Turl Street

Market Street

- at the back entrance to Boots store on the wall of the Trustee Savings Bank

St Martin & All Saints / St Michael at the North Gate 1960. OTSB)

- on the wall in the bar inside The Roebuck public house

St Martin & All Saints / St Michael at the North Gate. 1939

- set into the side wall of The Roebuck in the Covered Market access road

St Martin & All Saints / St Michael at the North Gate

Cornmarket Street

- a brass plate outside 9 Cornmarket Street (H. Samuel, Jewellers) 8 feet above street level.

The boundary stone of the parishes of St Martin, All Saints and St Michael at the North Gate. 1985

Broad Street

- a small metal cross at the base of the easternmost pillar of the main entrance to the Clarendon building.

Bodleian Library

- a St Andrew's Cross on the north wall of the Bodleian Library near the Sheldonian Theatre, facing the south wall of the Clarendon Building.

Brasenose Lane

- an incised St Andrew's Cross on the wall of Brasenose College 40 yards along Brasenose Lane from Radcliffe Square

High Street

- a small metal cross on the wall of Brasenose College opposite 108 High Street

- a St Andrew's cross about 5 feet above ground-level, incised in the wall just south of the vehicular entrance top All Souls.

Magpie Lane

- on the wall next to No.6, north of Kybald Street, with the letters

J II, C.W. (unidentified) and the date 1819

- on the wall opposite No.7. (The letters S.J.B. stand for St John Baptist, a church that stood in the grounds of Merton College from 1292 until 1891)

- on a wall in the car-park of Barclays Bank: an unmarked square stone

Bear Lane

- A St Andrew's Cross about 8 feet above street level on the wall of No.5 Bear Lane.

Three parish boundary-stones, set into the ground like milestones, have been observed:

- Behind a lamp-post near the bus-stop outside 78 St Clements Street is a reddish stone with the lettering CSJD 1858, standing for Cowley St John District. This marks the boundary of the parish of St Clement's with the then newly established ecclesiastical district of Cowley St John.

- On the boundary of Wolvercote Common and Port Meadow there are two identical stones with the inscription:

Wolvercote Common and Parish Boundary 1899 D.Collett, Chairman of the Parish Council.

One is about 100 yards south-west of the allotment gardens and the other is south-east of the gardens, near a concrete pillbox.

In the middle ages, a royal charter granted to the burgesses of Oxford various privileges known as 'liberties'. The area in which these privileges could be enjoyed extended well beyond the city walls, being defined by a 'ridden boundary' (ridden over on horseback once a year) which tended to expand over the centuries.

A boundary-stone marking the eastern limit of the Liberty is to be found on the towpath of the River Thames about three hundred yards upstream from Donnington Bridge where the footpath leads off to Long Bridges bathing place on Kennington Backwater. Up to this point, citizens had right of access to the river. The four-foot-high 'Free Water Stone', now whitewashed, has the date 1786 on the back, and on the front the words

In 1592, the City purchased the 'liberty' of the 'Northgate Hundred', an area which until then had been under independent jurisdiction. For the sum of £180, Oxford thus acquired what later became suburbs. Two boundary stones survive with identical inscriptions. One is on the west side of St Giles outside Number 42, and the other is on the west side of Parks Road about fifty yards north of the back entrance to the gardens of St John's College. The inscriptions read:

Anyone who walks round the outskirts of Oxford cannot fail to come across stones about the size of milestones set in the ground and inscribed with a date and the names of a Mayor and of a Sheriff. Some bear the City of Oxford coat of arms depicting an ox crossing a ford. These are city boundary stones which mark the limits of extensions to the city during the last hundred years or so. The earliest ones were marked as 'BS' (Boundary Stone) in early editions of the Ordinance Survey map, but only some of these are still in position, and later stones have not all been recorded on later maps.

The following list of boundary stones observed is not guaranteed to be definitive:

1840. (Thomas) Mallam, Mayor; (James) Wyatt, Sheriff

In a ditch by the tree-line in the south-east corner of Wolvercote Common. (The date 8.5.85 is roughly incised on the top).

1886. R. Buckell, Mayor; F. Twining, Sheriff

(1) In the field behind the public convenience situated in the car-park of Port Meadow Bathing Place.

(2) In the yard behind the Trout Inn

(3) Near the tree-line, east of a bridge over the drain in the south- east part of Wolvercote Common.

1892. F.W. Ansell, Mayor; W.S.Carver, Sheriff

Set into the side of Godstow Bridge, west of the Trout Inn.

(Two parish boundary-stones on Wolvercote Common are noted above).

1892. F. W. Ansell, Mayor; W. S. Carver, Sheriff

At the north end of Watereaton Road, in a ditch by the concrete bridge which crosses the stream between Sunnymead Recreation Ground and the River Cherwell.

- a stone with an illegible in scription in Woodstock Road near the boundary of St Edward's School playing- fields, opposite the Red Lion public house

1843. J. Wyatt, Mayor; Warburton, Sheriff

In the grounds of King's Mill House in University Parks  near the entrance from Marston Road

1886. R. Buckell, Mayor; F. Twining, Sheriff

About 200 yards on the New Marston side of Rainbow Bridge over the River Cherwell in University Parks

1901. G. C. Druce, Mayor; J. Dorn, Sheriff

On the west bank of the River Cherwell opposite the Victoria Arms. (Best approached on foot from allotments in Marston Ferry Road).

1837. CJS [C.J.Sadler], Mayor

In Cuckoo Lane, 240 paces up from Marston Road

(Since this inscription was recorded, the stone has been set deeper in the ground, thus obscuring the date).

1892 F. W. Ansell, Mayor; W. S. Carver, Sheriff

(1) In Woodlands Road, near the junction with Headley Way

(2) Outside 238 London Road at the entrance to Brookside.

1901. G. C. Druce, Mayor; J. Dorn, Sheriff

At the junction on Cuckoo Lane and Pullen's Lane

- a stone with an illegible inscription is built into a wall in Cuckoo Lane about 90 yards

down the path from Pullen's Lane.

(1) By the towpath of the River Thames, 140 yards downstream from Donnington Bridge.

(3) Behind a shed at the end of the garden of 50 Wytham Street, against the boundary fence of the railway.

In the far corner of the playing-field of Corpus Christi College near the bank of the Hinksey Stream (Approached over the railway footbridge off Whitehouse Lane).

1901. G. C. Druce, Mayor; J. Dorn, Sheriff

In the garden of 'Willowbank' opposite 144 North Hinksey Lane.

Near the river beyond the car-park, in the garden of the Fishes Inn.

1886. R. Buckell, Mayor; F. Twining, Sheriff

Under an isolated tree in the west corner of a field near Church Farm, about 300 yards beyond Binsey Church

In the corridor leading to the Council Chamber of Oxford Town Hall are twelve small carved heads of members of the City Council in 1897, the year in which the Town Hall was opened. The twelve include Robert Buckell and Frederick Ansell, both mentioned above, and three other former mayors, Thomas Lucas, Thomas Taphouse and Walter Gray, whose names appear on inscriptions elsewhere in the city. There is a portrait of Robert Buckell in the Assembly Room and one of C. J. Sadler in the Council Chamber.