The fun of laughing at some mythical and impossibly thick American sightseer in Oxford seems to have gone out of fashion. But I well remember the tale of how he once asked the way to the University and was told it was “everywhere”. Then there was the time he wanted to know how to achieve a perfect lawn — and was told that the trick was to lay it carefully and roll it daily for 300 years.

And then there was his request to be shown Oxford’s oldest historical site. He found himself wandering around Port Meadow along with the cattle and horses.

Had he done so at about this time of year, he might have hit lucky and witnessed a sort of tamer version of cowboy activity, a little reminiscent of his own Wild West, that must indeed be one of Oxford’s oldest ceremonies. For on a surprise date every summer the Sheriff of Oxford organises a dawn round-up of animals grazing on the land, sometimes impounding them in the ruins of Godstow Nunnery or, less romantically, in a pound built in 1981, and imposing fines on the owners of animals there without permission.

The flat expanse of water meadow on the north-west of Oxford is described in the Domesday Book (1086) as the place where “all the burgesses (or Freemen) of Oxford have a pasture outside the city wall in common, which pays 6s. 8d” (or 33p a year).

Its first name was Portmaneit (though the Port Meadow was in use by 1285) and may have been as much as 500 acres in extent, including what is now Wolvercote Common, Wolvercote Green, and Binsey Green — though when it was registered as common land in 1970 it comprised about 342 acres. Since at least 1562, inter-commoning rights have been shared with the Wolvercote Commoners, that is, Wolvercote residents.

Sheep were never allowed on the Meadow but geese were kept there and led to the river daily by goose boys and goose girls. Some of them interbred with wild geese and over the centuries a recognised hybrid goose evolved.

Horse racing was an important feature of Port Meadow from the 17th to 19th centuries. Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach (1683-1734), a German traveller and collector of books and manuscripts, visited the races on September 17, 1710, and described them thus: “There were many booths set up, where beer was sold, and each one had its sign, a hat, or glove or some such matter. Nearly everyone from the City was there and many visitors, some on horseback, some in coaches, some in boats. The horses that had to run were six in number. They had to run twice round the meadow, five English miles, which was done within ten minutes.”

The next day he wrote that he did not want to go again because “when you have seen it twice you get no more enjoyment out of it unless you are an Englishman, fond of torturing horses and take pleasure in overdoing the poor animals.”

But he added: “Still, we would have gone out again, if there had been this time, as is usual on the third day, a Smoake-race (Smock-race) where the women folk run for a prize in petticoats and low necked shifts, and the men folk in breeches without shirts. This time however it did not take place.”

During the Civil War the Meadow was the scene of a skilful Royalist move when King Charles I escaped from Oxford for the first time. By June 1644, the Parliamentarians had decided the time had come to capture Oxford and the king. But on June 3 at about 9pm the king and some 2,500 musketeers managed to march out of the city to Port Meadow where 3,000 horses were drawn up. Then the whole lot silently marched out of town along a track to Yarnton, without the Parliamentarians even seeing them.

In the First World War, indeed earlier, the meadow was used as an aerodrome. In 1911 it was a matter of national marvel that a Mr Latham succeeded in flying from Brooklands to Royal Flying Corps (RFC) Port Meadow and back again. Sadly, though, the next year saw one of the country’s first aviation accidents, when Lieutenants Bettington and Hotchkiss, flying a Bristol Coanda, were killed at Wolvercote — an event recorded by a memorial plaque on the bridge between Wolvercote and Godstow.