Inscriptions: Parish boundary 1
This parish boundary marker on a wall in New Inn Hall Street is inscribed "St M" and "St P le B" and shows the boundary between the parishes of St Michael (whose church is in Cornmarket) and the former church of St Peter le Bayley (whose church is now part of St Peter's College). It has a plain cross, and the date 1933.
Now that St Ebbe's has absorbed the parish of St Peter-le-Bailey, it would today read "St M" and "St E".
The above stone is one of about thirty such markers in central Oxford marking the boundaries of the parish of St Michael, which observes the "Beating of the bounds" ceremony each year. Most of them have a plain cross like this one, some have a St Andrew's cross, and the one in the car park of the Covered Market has the cross of St Michael.
Similar stones can be found in the floor of Marks & Spencer in Queen Street; on the inside wall of the Roebuck Inn in Market Street; at the rear entrance to Boots in Market Street; and in St Peter's, Brasenose, and Lincoln Colleges.
The beating of the bounds
St Michael's and the University Church of St Mary the Virgin are the only two churches in Oxford which still observe this medieval ceremony each Ascension Day. At St Michael's the Vicar marches from the church with the choir in red cassocks and some Lincoln College undergraduates in subfusc. They all carry long canes with which to "beat" the bounds, and the Vicar draws a cross in chalk on each of the stones. This parish is much bigger than it used to be, as it has incorporated the parishes of St Martin and All Saints, and it takes about two hours for them to work their way around the thirty parish boundary stones.