Mayor's perambulation of the City bounds: Thursday 28 July 1831
Mayor: Thomas Wyatt
Boundary of city shown by blue-green line on this map
The following article was published in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 30 July 1831. The perambulation did not include St Clement's, which was not taken into the city until 1835.
It appears to have been much livelier than earlier nineteenth-century perambulations: a large party of the Mayor's friends accompanied the city officials and councillors, and there were many spectators, including ladies who took boats down to the Free Water Stone.
One boat capsized, and twenty-four people, including the mace-bearer with the precious mace of 1651 (the largest civic mace in Britain) ended up in the River Cherwell. (The mace ended up in the river again 61 years later in 1892, and the cross from the top was lost.
The perambulation was concluded with a supper for about a hundred people at the Town Hall at 10pm, thirteen hours after the group set out from there.
