The Oxebode, Gloucester

The Oxebode is a street in central Gloucester, southwest England, that does not look particularly remarkable – a typical shopping street with broad pavements and several mature plane trees to shade it. However, the unusual name – found nowhere else in the country – is a clue to the strange story that  is associated with it.

Oxebode is a corruption of “ox body”. The story goes back to medieval times when oxen – castrated bulls – were often used in England as draft animals for hauling carts or drawing ploughs. It was the unfortunate fate of one such ox that gave the street its name.

Gloucester is a city that dates back to Roman times, although the oldest domestic buildings to be seen today are from the 15^th century. In mediaeval times Mitre Street was lined by houses that leaned towards each other on either side and were almost touching at the end of the street as it led into Northgate Street. Indeed, the funnel was so narrow that an ox, being led to market, became wedged solid between the houses and could not be freed. 

The solution to the problem was somewhat gruesome but it did the trick to the satisfaction of all concerned, with the sole exception of the ox.

A local butcher was summoned to kill the ox where it stood and cut it up into pieces of meat that were then sold to the local populace. 

The event led to the street being renamed Oxbody Street and to a local nursery rhyme: 

There’s an ox lying dead at the end of the lane
His head on the pathway, his feet in the drain.
The lane is so narrow, his back is so wide,
He got stuck in the road twixt a house on each side. 

He couldn’t go forward, he couldn’t go back
He was stuck just as fast as a nail in a crack.
And the people all shouted ‘So tightly he fits
We must kill him and carve him and move him in bits’.

So a butcher dispatched him and then had a sale
Of his ribs and his sirloin, his rump and his tail.
And the farmer he told me ‘I’ll never again
Drive cattle to market down Oxbode Lane’.

© John Welford

Dilys Price: skydiver

Dilys Price is a remarkable woman and the holder of a number of world records, her speciality being solo skydiving at an advanced age. She began this hobby at the age of 65 and is still doing so – at the time of writing she is 86 and shows no sign of giving up.

She was born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1932 and followed a career as a dance teacher. She had the idea of practicing dancing in the air and joined a skydiving school so that she could adopt ballet positions as she hurtled down from an aeroplane.

When she was a mere youth of 69 she decided to try jumping from a balloon rather than an aeroplane. She did so from 5000 feet above the Arizona desert, which meant jumping into what is known as “dead air” – no wind but plenty of unpredictable thermals in the unusually thin air of that region. The net result is that one plunges earthwards like a stone.

After plenty of instruction from experts, Dilys made her first jump, which was a perfect success apart from landing on a cactus.

Dilys enjoyed the experience so much – apart from the last bit – that she just had to do it again. This time she landed in the exercise yard of Arizona’s state prison.

Dilys Price – who has been awarded the OBE for her charitable and practical work on behalf of disabled people – has to count as one of the UK’s most notable eccentrics.

© John Welford