Oxford possesses two so-called 'Peace Stones' which bear the inscription

One of them is at the base of a lamp-post on the north side of the St Clement's roundabout, and the other has been built into the north wall of Carfax Tower near the staircase turret. The stones are a reminder of the premature peace celebrations which took place in England in 1814 to mark what was thought to be the final defeat of Napoleon who had been deposed as Emperor of France and banished to the island of Elba.

Oxford marked the occasion not only by erecting the Peace Stones but also by holding a grand University celebration which was attended by the most notable bigwigs on the winning side, including the Tsar, the King of Prussia, Blucher, Metternich, the Prince Regent, the Duke of York (the 'grand old Duke of York' of nursery-rhyme fame) and, of course, the Duke of Wellington. Banquets were held at Christ Church and in the Radcliffe Camera, and degrees were conferred in the Sheldonian with much congratulatory back-slapping.

But it was too soon to celebrate. Only seven months later, Napoleon escaped from Elba. French forces sent to capture him turned round and fell in behind him, and within a month of his escape he had entered Paris. Early in June 1815 he proclaimed a new constitution. His final defeat at Waterloo came on 18 June, and by mid-July he was on board the Bellerophon bound for St Helena where he died after six years in exile.

While Waterloo spelt disaster for Napoleon, it made Wellington into a national hero, and Oxford was one of the many cities to honour him. He was Chancellor of the University from 1834 until his death in 1852, and he is commemorated in the name of Wellington Square, built between 1869 and 1876, where his portrait in profile can be seen in a cartouche high up on the wall of Number 3. There is also a Wellington Street in Jericho and a Wellington Place off St Giles. The Examination Schools have a bust of him by Sir Francis Chantrey (in the lobby) and a portrait by John Lucas (in the North Writing School).

The so-called Tirah Memorial was erected in 1900 in what is now Bonn Square to commemorate the men who fell in the North-West Frontier of India. The twenty-five foot high obelisk made of stone from Monk's Park Quarry, Bath, stands on a base of Doulting stone. The inscription reads:

This monument was erected by the officers, non-commissioned officers and .men of the 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire Light Infantry, in memory of their comrades who died between 15th August 1897 and 4th November 1898.

The period covers two separate military campaigns, the Tirah Campaign and the North West Frontier Campaign. The number 52 which appears with the regimental badge on the memorial was the old number of the Battalion as a Regiment of the Line.

To the names of those who died in India has been added the name of a Major A.B.Thruston who was killed in Uganda by 'mutinous native officers on the MacDonald Expedition in October 1897.' Major J.R.L. MacDonald of the Royal Engineers had originally gone to East Africa to carry out a survey for the railway leading inland from the port of Mombasa, but he subsequently found himself obliged to try and keep the peace with unreliable troops among hostile tribal factions. Major Thruston, who spoke fluent Arabic, was in charge of a garrison of Sudanese troops who shot him in cold blood together with two other British officers. He is also commemorated on a monument in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral.

The South African War Memorial

Outside the Royal Greenjackets Regimental Museum at the Slade Park Territorial Army Centre stands the regimental memorial to the men who died in the war now known as the Boer War. Surmounting the memorial is a life-size figure of a soldier holding a rifle and wearing a sun- helmet. The inscription reads:

On the monument are inscribed the names of 33 men who were killed in action and 109 who died of disease.

The monument was originally erected in St Clement's on the site now occupied by the roundabout. At the time of its dedication there on 19th September 1903, only enough money had been subscribed for the base and the pedestal, and the statue of the soldier was added later. The whole memorial was eventually moved to Cowley Barracks, then the regimental headquarters of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (OBLI), and in 1967 it was again moved to its present site at Slade Park.

Since 1985, the annual regimental service on Remembrance Sunday (commemorating the two later World Wars) has been held at the site of the South African War Memorial in Slade Park because increased traffic made it too dangerous to continue to hold services at the memorial on the corner of Iffley Road and Church Cowley Road. Wreaths laid at the service in Slade Park are later transferred to the Iffley Road memorial.

On the corner of Iffley Road and Church Cowley Road stands a tall obelisk which marks the memorial of the local regiment, the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Originally, the county had its own regiment, the Oxfordshire Light Infantry, but in 1908 this was amalgamated with the Buckinghamshire Light Infantry to form the 'Ox and Bucks' (OBLI). The OBLI continued its existence during both World Wars, but since 1966 it has become part of the Royal Green Jackets whose headquarters are in Winchester. The inscription on the face of the OBLI memorial reads:

To the glorious memory of the 5878 of all ranks of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry who fell in the Great War.

and at the back of the monument are the words:

To the glorious memory of 1408 all ranks of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry who gave their lives in the Second World War 1939- 1945

From the end of the Great War until 1984, the annual Service of Remembrance was held at this memorial.

In Oxford Town Hall, four war memorial tablets are to be found on the wall of the foyer at the top of the main staircase, commemorating:

4th OBLI Territorial Battalion 1914-1918

Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars 1914-1918

Oxfordshire Heavy Batteries, Royal Artillery 1916-1918

22 members of staff of the Corporation of Oxford 1938-1945

There is also a memorial on the wall of the Main Hall of the old Oxfordshire County Council Hall in New Road in memory of County staff who died in both World Wars.

At the entrance to 65 George Street, the registered offices of the Oxford & Swindon Cooperative Society (opposite the Welsh Pony), is a bronze plaque In memory of employees of the Oxford Cooperative Society who gave their lives for their country's cause during the Great War. 1914-1918.

The Regimental Chapel of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry was the Church of St James in Beauchamp Lane (off Church Cowley Road), Cowley. Here, on the north wall of the nave are regimental memorials to the men who died in India and Burma; and the churchyard contains military graves.

The fallen of the OBLI are remembered in the grander surroundings of Christ Church Cathedral where the regimental chapel in the South Choir Aisle perpetuates their memory. On a carved wooden screen at the entrance to the aisle may be seen the regimental emblems of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry (a horn surmounted by a crown) and of the Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (The Dunstable Swan). A plaque on the north wall of the aisle has the inscription:

This regimental chapel of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry was dedicated on 11th November 1931 being the anniversary of the Armistice of 1918 by Thomas, Bishop of Oxford, in memory of 5878 officers, warrant-officers, non-commissioned officers and men of the regiment who fell in the Great War 1914-1918

Near the plaque are two glass-topped cases with Rolls of Honour containing the names of members of the Regiment killed in both World Wars. The chairs in the chapel bear the names of fallen soldiers in whose memory they were donated. The regimental flags hang on the south wall of the south transept.

At the north end of St Giles stands Oxford's most prominent and best known war memorial which bears the coats of arms of both City and University. It is here that the civic service is held on Remembrance Sunday.

Every parish church has its own memorial. one of the more obscure ones being in the grounds of St Michael's School, New Marston (in Marston Road opposite the playing-fields of Trinity College and Lady Margaret Hall), where it was placed before the present parish church was built at the foot of Jack Straw's Lane.

Athe the other lists 13 men who died in the Second World War. On the latter, the words 'We will remember them' have a hollow ring when both memorial and men are so obviously forgotten.

War memorials from the former Boys Central School and Oxford High School for Boys are now to be found at Oxford School, Glanville Road. The memorials for the 1914-1918 war list 54 names from the Central School and 80 names from Oxford High School. A further 56 names appear on the Oxford High School memorial for the Second World War.

In both World Wars, Oxford mourned the death not only of its own citizens but also of the young men who had been at the University. As Jan Morris points out in The Oxford Book of Oxford, some 2,700 Oxford men were killed in the Great War at a time when the student population was about 3,000. In the Second World War, although Oxford was spared the bombing that devastated other British cities, it still had to suffer the double loss of both citizens and students. The names of the students are listed on what Jan Morris describes as 'tragic memorial slabs' in every college.

At Christ Church, the names of the fallen are recorded at the entrance to the Cathedral, and in their memory a War Memorial Garden was established at the St Aldate's entrance to Christ Church Meadow. Just inside the entrance-gates is a sword set into the paving, surmounted by words from John Bunyan's Mr Valiant-for-Truth:

My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage.

Another war memorial garden is to found in Kennington, where a field, the Kennington Memorial Field, was bought to perpetuate the memory of men killed in the Second World War. The field is at the Radley end of The Avenue, west of Cranbrook Drive. A plaque on the gatepost lists the names of six young men who died between 1940 and 1944.

Under the archway of the Founder's Tower in St John's Quadrangle of Magdalen College is a plaque surmounted by the badge of the Royal Air Force:

1st February 1941 to 30th April 1945.

From 1940 to 1945, part of St John's College was taken over by the Ministry of Food as the headquarters of the Potato Marketing Board. The episode is recorded in gold lettering on a large green notice-board half way up the stairs leading to the buttery. Nothing so vulgar as a potato is mentioned in the stylish Latin inscription:

Sciant praesentes et futuri quod in his cameris almi collegii D Jo. Bapt. per sex fer.me annos tribulationis MCMXL - MCMXLV multi tam viri tam feminae provisioni et distributioni ciboru.m ad sustentatlonem populi grato animo vires intendebant.

Fecerunt bona in malo tempore et speraverunt in perlculoso

'They did good in a moment of evil and preserved hope in t1mes of danger'.)

On the wall of the foyer on the ground floor of Oxford Town Hall is a metal shield-like device with crossed bayonets, bearing the words:

OLD CONTEMPTIBLES 1914 AUG 5 to NOV 22

Beneath it is a wooden plaque with an inscription explaining that the shield was presented on the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War (i.e. in 1964) by the Old Contemptibles Association in memory of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) which went to France in 1914. The names of four battlefields are listed: Mons, Marne, Aisne and Ypres.

The name 'Contemptibles' derives from an order reported to have been issued in August 1914 by the Kaiser to the German army instructing them to exterminate the 'contemptible little army' of the British Expeditionary Force. The Kaiser later denied that he had used the word 'contemptible', but by that time the BEF - a body of about 150,000 men, all regular soldiers - had adopted the epithet and had proved by their feats of arms that they were more than a match for the German army.

By November 1914 other troops had arrived in France but only the members of the original BEF considered themselves entitled to be called 'Contemptiblest. After the Armistice they formed Old Contemptibles Associations, but by the 1960s they had become too old to continue and decided to call it a day. The Oxford Association used their remaining funds to commemorate themselves in the Town Hall, and there was a grand farewell national parade ,\in London in 1966.

The Old Contemptibles are also remembered in the City Church of St Michael at the North Gate where a small plaque at the west end of the north aisle bears the words Oxford 'Old Contemptibles' Association.

In the south aisle of St Michael's Church is a memorial window erected by the Oxford branch of the Burma Star Association to commemorate those who fought and died in Burma between 1941 and 1945. The design incorporates the inscription

The original source of the words is a free translation of a passage from the Greek author Simonides, in which Leonidas urges the small Spartan army to stand firm at the pass of Thermopylae against the huge Persian army led by Xerxes. In 1945 the lines were chosen for an epitaph on the war memorial to the British 2nd Division in the military cemetery at Kohima in the Naga Hills of Assam, India. (The town of Kohima was the farthest point reached by the Japanese in their attempted invasion of India in 1945). The inscription also appears in a memorial window to the 2nd Division at the Garrison Church, Aldershot.

Botley Cemetery in North Hinksey Lane has an area of about an acre surrounded by a yew hedge, administered by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWCG), where servicemen from both World Wars lie buried.

From the 1914-18 War there are 167 graves, mainly of men who died in the 3rd Southern General Hospital whose main base was in the Examination Schools. A large memorial cross in the cemetery dates from this period.

During the 1939-45 War, Botley became the regional cemetery of the Royal Air Force. Of the 580 graves, 457 are of airmen (165 from Britain, 151 Australians, 85 Canadians, 54 New Zealanders and 2 South Africans). The remaining graves include some of German and Italian prisoners of war.

Over each grave is the distinctive headstone of the CWGC (2'8" high in Portland stone), and the graves - nearly 750 of them - are arranged in ordered lines and in an immaculately kept garden, all in the best tradition of the CWGC.

As in all CWGC cemeteries of any size, Oxford's has a Stone of Remembrance, a ten-ton block of Portland stone, 12 feet long, raised up on three steps, made to the design of Sir Edwin Lutyens (who also designed the Cenotaph in Whitehall). The Stone is inscribed on both sides with words chosen by Rudyard Kipling from Ecclesiasticus 44.14:

Most CWGC cemeteries of this size also have a Cross of Sacrifice, but here the existing memorial cross was obviously deemed sufficient.

Another feature of the Oxford CWGC cemetery is an attractive Shelter in Portland stone where the Register is kept, listing all the service graves in the Oxford region, including those at Botley.

An avenue of silver birch trees leads from the memorial cross to the Stone of Remembrance, and the trees at the back of the Stone are Canadian maple presented by the Canadian government in honour of the 85 Canadians buried there.