Oxford Castle Prison

Oxford Castle is defined by the rough, tapering stonework of Saint George’s Tower, which stands as a jagged remnant of the original eleventh-century fortification. While the site functioned as a prison for nearly eight hundred years, its most volatile chapter came in sixteen forty-two. During the English Civil War, royalist soldiers turned the stronghold into a military garrison. When parliamentarian forces eventually took the site, they found the castle dungeons overflowing with starving captives who had been forced to eat rats to survive.