Street view Port Meadow

Port Meadow (RIGHT bank all along here).

Black Jack's Hole (bend above the Perch)

1787: Before Godstow Lock was decided upon there was discussion about a pound lock at Black Jack's Hole.
1909: The Stripling Thames, Fred Thacker -

Black Jack's, once a willowy island, is now part of the meadow. The River is still very deep and dark at Black Jack's ("Black John's Pitt" in Wood), though once much deeper. To scare youngsters from bathing there a bogey tale was told them of an evil goblin who would leap upon them and keep them under water in his cave.

Site of Peel Yate Ford in Port Meadow (mentioned by Jessop in 1789).

1791: Samuel Ireland -

THE beauty of the scenery a little below Godstow still encreases, and the river nobly expanding itself, seems proudly urging its course, to pay its tribute to that ancient and noble seminary of learning, Oxford, whose venerable towers and lofty domes all happily unite to form a general mass of objects superior to any thing which this country can boast.

In 'Oxford' by Frederick Douglas How -

Who has not heard of Port Meadow - the town's meadow, as the name infers?
Low it lies on the river bank to the north-west of the town.
For hundreds of years - since the time, indeed, of the Domesday Book - it has belonged to the freemen of Oxford, and to-day may still be seen their flocks of geese, white patterned on a ground of green, with here and there a horse with tired feet ending his days where grass is soft and plentiful.
The Isis, the Upper River as here it is commonly called, has a special beauty as it flows along the edge of Port Meadow, or above it hang the Witham woods, and on its edge is the little hamlet of Binsey, giving a touch of human interest and rural picturesqueness to the scene.
It is worth while to row or sail against the stream until the whole of the meadow is passed by, for then comes Godstow, where Fair Rosamond found refuge, and where she was at last laid to rest.

'From the Thames, near Binsey Green' 1848

Oxford Skyline from St Edward's Boathouse over Port Meadow

Duns Scotus's Oxford by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

Towery city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark charmèd, rook racked, river-rounded;
The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did
Once encounter in, here coped & poisèd powers;

Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours
That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded
Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded
Rural, rural keeping - folk, flocks, and flowers.

Yet ah! this air I gather and I release
He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;

Of realty the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a not
Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;
Who fired France for Mary without spot.

1859: The Thames, Mr & Mrs Hall

... the meadow - "Port Meadow", which, containing 439 acres, reaches almost to the city, whose property it is, and has been from time immemorial, as recorded in Domesday. Every citizen has the right of free pasturage for cattle, or, rather, a right for which he pays the annual tribute of two pence for each horse or cow found there on the day upon which the city authorities meet for inspection - a day of which, of course, no previous notice has been given. It is usually overflowed in winter, and has thus time for repose.

1863: The Great Volunteer Review in Lewis Carroll's Diary -

24 June 1863 (Wed.)
Great Volunteer Review in Port Meadow. I went there with Dukes (who had to leave before it was over) and there fell in with the Liddells, and with Hoole.

Lewis Carroll was impressed.
An estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people watched a 'sham fight' involving 8,000 men 'from some of the finest bodies of cavalry, artillery, and infantry'. At least two grandstands were erected.
It is thought that some of the battle scenes 'and all the King's horses and all the King's men' in the Alice stories may have sprung from Carroll's imagination after seeing this.

1890: Summer Days on the Thames by Alfred J Church, going downstream -

... as the river, purer and clearer than we shall ever see it again, gently carries us along, we catch across Port Meadow, dotted with numerous cattle, our first glimpse of the spires of Oxford. The view is not as effective as that which may be found elsewhere, and one or two unsightly additions are unpleasingly prominent, but it is sufficiently striking.