Riding the Franchise

Not to be confused with Beating the Bounds, when churches on Ascension Day beat their parish boundaries

The Mayor of Oxford used to ride the franchise to inspect the city's boundary stones near the end of his year of office. Jackson's Oxford Journal observed on 12 September remarked that although making a circuit of the municipal franchise had become obsolete in many places, it was “evidently the most effective way of preventing litigation on questions of boundary”.

Following the Municipal Corporations Act of 1836, this was supposed to be done every third year, but the rule was not followed strictly, and when the city became larger at the end of the nineteenth century it became less frequent. The group only had the right to walk the boundary: as Frederick Ansell pointed out in 1892, “We have no right over people's fields and gardens. We must go straight to the boundary and keep to the boundary.”

In more recent years there have been partial perambulations by two Lord Mayors:
by Frank Arnold Garside in 1984, and by Mark Lygo on Monday 4 October 2021

Mark Davies, What a Liberty! Memorable Moments along Oxford's Ancient Ridden Boundaries,
an illustrated booklet published by the Museum of Oxford in 2021, is available for sale at that museum

Oxford's principal boundary changes

• 1773 – Description of the boundary of Oxford in that year
• 1832 – Map showing the extension of the parliamentary boundary of Oxford to include St Clement’s & Headington Hill*
• 1868 – Map showing the extension of the parliamentary boundary of Oxford to include Summertown,
           East Oxford, and the part of Headington to the west of the Boundary Brook
• 1886 – Description by John Gilbert of the thirty boundary stones marking the boundary of the city up to this date
• 1889 – The Boundary Brook, the eastern boundary of Oxford from this date to 1929
• 1929– This map shows in blue the boundary of Oxford from 1889 to 1928 and in red the extended boundary that would became effective from 1929 as a result of the Oxford Extension Act of 1928, which brought parts of Wolvercote, Cutteslowe, Water Eaton (detached), Marston, Headington, Cowley and Iffley into the city
• Current boundary – Downloadable map on Oxford City Council website

* Extracts from Lord John Russell's Bill for the Division of Counties were published in Jackson's Oxford Journal
   on 20 February 1832, outlining the new eastern boundary of Oxford city thus :

OXFORD.—From the tree on the east of the city, called “Joe Pullen's Tree,” in a straight line to the boundary stone in the lane, called “Mrs. Knapp's Free Board”; thence along the said lane to the western extremity thereof; thence in a straight line to the centre of the island situate at the junction of the stream called “Aston's Eyatt” with the river Charwell; thence, westward, along the river Charwell, to the point at which the same joins the old city boundary; thence, westward, along the old city boundary to the point at which the river Charwell divides into two streams; thence along the easternmost of such two streams, to King's Mill; then in a strait line to the easternmost part of King's Mill; thence in a straight line to “Joe Pullen's Tree.”