The Martyrs' Memorial commemorates the 16th-century Oxford Martyrs.

The monument was built 300 years after the events of the English Reformation and commemorates the Bishop of Worcester, Hugh Latimer, and Bishop of London, Nicholas Ridley, who were burned nearby on 16 October 1555 after having been convicted for heresy because of their Protestant beliefs after a quick trial. It also commemorates the former archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, who was similarly executed (after having watched his colleagues' painful deaths while imprisoned in a nearby tower and the Vatican having permitted his degradation from holy orders in February) on 21 March 1556. The Rev. Charles Pourtales Golightly (a descendant of Huguenots who fled to England in that earlier era) and other Anglican clergy raised the funds to erect the monument during the Victorian era.  Golightly and his colleagues were alarmed at the Anglo-Catholic realignment the movement was bringing into the Church of England, and wanted the memorial to reflect the university's Protestant profession and anti-Catholic tradition.

Designed by George Gilbert Scott, the monument was completed in 1843 after two years' work, having replaced "a picturesque but tottering old house". The Victorian Gothic memorial, whose design dates from 1838, has been likened to the steeple of a cathedral, though it was consciously patterned on the Eleanor crosses erected by King Edward I between 1290 and 1294 to the memory of his wife, Queen Eleanor of Castile (1241–1290). The monument is listed at Grade II*.

The actual execution site is close by in Broad Street, just outside the line of the old city walls. The site is marked by an iron cross sunk in the road.

Martyrs' Memorial, Oxford - Wikipedia