Oxfordshire celebrates 1000 years with flames

by Kaitlin | March 16, 2007 at 01:28 pm

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From a Canadian standpoint, this story is flummoxing: my hometown recently celebrated it's 100th birthday. Oxfordshire is a young 1000. It could probably teach my town a thing or two...

Oxford's showpiece Broad Street went up in flames last night with an incendiary fire display to launch Oxfordshire's Millennium celebrations.

The centrepiece of the event was a bamboo spire holding a fiery pendulum, created by artist Ted Dewan and a team of students.

Each full swing of the pendulum counts off one of the 1,000 years of Oxfordshire, Mr Dewan, who lives in North Oxford, has joined forces with French arts event company Carabosse to set up the Luminox fire installations, which will be lit up until Saturday night.

Judging by the article's comments, there's a bit of a disconnect in Oxford-goers' minds between fiery things and 1000 years of existence, but that's not going to get them down:

hello there,we were there last night between 7:30pm and 9pm.There was a ball of fire dangling from a crane blowing in the breeze,but it was not attached to the spire,We asked each other what its purpose was as we expected it to be lit somehow. But none the less it was a good display.