17/02/2026
Thank you John May - High Sheriff of Oxfordshire 2025/6 for your brilliant talk this evening, it was really enjoyable.
From Saewold to Weston – talking High Sheriffs in Bicester
A wet February evening at the Clifton Centre last night, speaking to a full and engaged Bicester Local History Society, kindly invited by my good friend and fellow villager Bob Hessian.
We ranged from Saewold, an Anglo-Saxon Sheriff before the Norman Conquest, through Robert d’Oilly and Oxford Castle, the Ploughley Hundred (within which Weston lay), Magna Carta, Civil War allegiances, and even executions under the old Assize system.
Closer to home, we looked at 20th-century High Sheriffs with strong Bicester links, including Randal Smith of Tusmore in 1945 – a moment of real transition for the county and the country.
And then to today: a High Sheriff who no longer raises militia or collects taxes, but supports the judiciary, visits prisons, and tries to ensure that young people are heard before things go wrong.
It was a thoughtful, well-informed audience with good questions – just what you’d hope for from a Local History Society.
My thanks to Bob for the invitation, and to everyone who ventured out in the rain. It was good to explore a long strand of Oxfordshire’s history, much of it closer to home than we sometimes realise.
