Port Meadow is a large meadow of common land, which (according to legend) was bequeathed upon the Freemen of Oxford by Alfred the Great after fending off a wave of the Great Heathen Army. Use of the meadow for pasture remains, to this day, a collective right of the Freemen of Oxford. The meadow acts as a flood plain for the river Thames during the winter and during the Summer produces some spectacular river walks. It was also here, in 1962, that Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) told Alice Liddell the story of Alice in Wonderland for the first time.