Patrick Comerford
I recently walked along ‘Deadman’s Walk’, the footpath from Christ Church Meadows to the Rose Garden and the Botanic Gardens in Oxford. This pathway linked the mediaeval Jewry along what is now St Aldates in Oxford to the mediaeval Jewish cemetery by the banks of the Cherwell, and to this day it is known as Deadman’s Walk.
During those walks, I also visited three plaques erected in recent decades that mark the site of the mediaeval Jewish cemetery at the Rose Garden by the Botanic Garden and in Saint John’s Quad in Magdalen College.
Jews first arrived in England with the Norman Conquest in 1066, and 20 years later the Domesday Book in 1086 recorded a Jew living in Oxfordshire in 1086. What is now known as St Aldate’s then became known as Great Jewry Street, and a nearby street was called Little Jewry Lane. Many Jewish homes were in close proximity, indicating Oxford had a flourishing Jewish community.
The presence of this Jewish community is shown in the existence of a synagogue on Great Jewry Street, founded by Copin of Worcester in 1228. This is now the site of the Archdeacon’s house in Christ Church College.
The mediaeval Jewish cemetery in Oxford was first laid out on land bought by the Jewish community in the meadows by the Cherwell River after 1177. The site lay just outside the East Gate of the ancient city walls.
For many years, the Jews of England were prohibited from burying their dead outside London and they had to bring them to London to be buried in the Jewish cemetery outside Cripplegate, on Jewin Street, known then as ‘Jews’ Garden’.
This restriction continued until 1177, when Henry II allowed Jews to acquire burial sites outside London. However, it is not known when Jews began burying their dead in Oxford. When Gedaliyah ben Moses of Wallingford (‘Deus-eum-crescat’) died ca 1188, his body was taken to London for burial, which indicates the cemetery had not yet been laid out by 1188.
At some time between 1188 and 1231, the members of the Jewish community in Oxford began burying their dead members on land between the East Gate and the Cherwell River. This site, representing the part of High Street that runs between Longwall Street and Magdalen Bridge, was acquired with royal approval.
The site of the Jewish cemetery in Oxford was reduced in 1231, when Henry III granted the part of the burial site on the north side of the High Street to Hospital of Saint John the Baptist. The hospital appears in the records in 1181, and it was granted the land of the ‘Garden of the Jews’ to build a hospital in 1231, on condition that a piece of land measuring 300 ft by 90 ft on the south side of High Street was retained for Jewish burials.
A small area of the meadows, near the present Rose Garden, remained as the Jewish burial ground until 1290, when all Jews were expelled from England under Edward I. The site of the former cemetery is now represented by part of Magdalen College and by a portion of the Botanic Gardens.
The Hospital of Saint was dissolved in 1457, when it was granted to William Waynfleet for the foundation of Magdalen College. Part of the site of the original Jewish cemetery was let out as a meadow to tenants of Magdalen College until 1621, when the Botanic Garden or Physic Garden, was founded by Henry Danvers (1573-1644), Earl Danby, a former Lord President of Munster and a cousin of the priest-poet George Herbert.
Lord Danby obtained a new lease of the meadowland site of the former Jewish cemetery from Magdalen College. The site was chosen because it was ‘aptly watered with the River Charwell.’
A mass of bones was dug up when the wall of the ‘Physic Garden’ was built between 1621 and 1633. To free the garden from flooding from the adjacent Cherwell River, the level of the garden was raised between the north wall and the bridge in 1642. The unearthing of bones during the construction of the wall and the raising of the ground suggest that even today there may be graves beneath the site.
The existence of a Jewish cemetery on the site remained widely known and the Jewish community in Oxford would pray there and recite the mourners’ Kaddish on Friday afternoons up until the 1920s.
Today, the leafy entrance to the Botanic Garden, with its serene classical-style Danby Gate and ornate Rose Garden, offers an escape from Oxford’s busy High Street. But this tranquil spot also displays two of the three plaques in Oxford commemorating the existence of a mediaeval Jewish cemetery.
A plaque on the right-hand wall beside the Danby Gate at the entrance to the Botanic Garden was unveiled by the City Council in 1931. This plaque commemorates the site of the mediaeval Jewish cemetery. The plaque is in a discreet corner that makes it difficult to find and read. The inscription reads: ‘This stone marks the site of the Jewish Cemetery until 1290.’
The plaque was inspired by Herbert Loewe (1882-1940), lecturer in Semitic languages at Exeter College, Oxford, who also inspired the plaque on the site of the Town Hall, commemorating Great Jewry Street and the plaque on the former site of Osney Abbey where Haggai (Robert) of Reading, was burnt to death in 1221 as punishment for converting to Judaism and refusing to recant.
The Oxford Jewish Heritage Committee erected a second, more prominent, granite memorial to the mediaeval Jewish Community facing the Rose Garden, outside the enclosure of the walled Botanic Garden, on 4 July 2012.
The very wordy English inscription on the memorial stone gives the history of the site:
‘Beneath this stone lies a medieval cemetery.
‘Around 1190 the Jews of Oxford purchased a water meadow outside the city walls to establish a burial ground. In 1231 that land, now occupied by Magdalen College, was appropriated by the Hospital of St John, and a small section of wasteland, where this memorial lies, was given to the Jews for a new cemetery.
‘An ancient footpath linked the cemetery with the medieval Jewish quarter along Great Jewry Street, now St Aldate’s. For over 800 years, this path has been called ‘Deadman’s Walk’, a name that bears silent witness to a community that contributed to the growth of this City and University throughout the 12th and 13th centuries.
‘In 1290 all the Jews were expelled from England by King Edward I. They were not permitted to return for over 350 years.
‘May their memory be blessed.’
Another part of the original Jewish cemetery is the site of the Tower and part of the south side of Magdalen College. Human bones were found in Magdalen College during building works in 2016-2017 on the site of the mediaeval kitchen. They indicated the further reaches of the site of the mediaeval Jewish cemetery. Magdalen College later erected a tablet in memory of the Jewish people who were buried there, and who were reburied on 20 June 2019.
The plaque set into the paving in Saint John’s Quad to mark the discovery reads:
‘The site of the first Oxford Jewish Cemetery c. 1190 – 1231
‘The remains of unknown souls were found here in 2016.’
זכרונו\ה\ם\ן לברכה, May their memories be a blessing
Shabbat Shalom
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