📍Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2LN, UK
1157 – 1160“I was born in the King's Houses at Beaumont Palace in Oxford, just outside the city's north gate, on 8 September 1157, the third son of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Beaumont was a royal residence where my parents stayed when they were in Oxford, with its hall, chapel and gardens beside the city walls. My mother, the most powerful woman in Europe, was there at my birth; my father was often away governing his vast lands, which stretched from Scotland to the Pyrenees. As a baby I was nursed by Hodierna, a woman from St Albans whose own son, Alexander Neckam, was born the same night and later became a famous scholar; I was generous to her all my life. My earliest years were spent in England, but I was soon taken to my mother's lands in Aquitaine and Poitou, in western France. There, in the courts of Poitiers, I grew up among troubadours, poetry and music, and I learned to ride, fight and command. My mother made me her heir to Aquitaine, and at eleven I was named Count of Poitou. I was more at home in Aquitaine than in England, and I spoke French rather than English. I became king in 1189, led the Third Crusade, where I earned the name Lionheart, and spent only a few months of my reign in England. Yet I was born an Englishman in Oxford. Beaumont Palace has long gone, but a plaque on Beaumont Street marks the spot where the King's Houses stood, and Oxford still points proudly to the place where the Lionheart was born.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today