| |
More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
|
Oxford
|
|
|
(119,000 in 1991)
City and site of Britain's oldest university; administrative centre of Oxfordshire. The medieval town, first mentioned in the 10C, grew up in the angle formed by the junction of two rivers – the Thames (called locally the *Isis) and the Cherwell. The central crossroads of the old town is still known as the Carfax, a word deriving from the Latin for 'four forks'. The university, which began in the 12C, provides Oxford's main identity; but there has been considerable industrial development in the 20C, the result of *Morris setting up his car factory in the suburb of Cowley.
|
|
|
|
|
The first students found what accommodation they could, and the earliest surviving college – University College – was originally a student hostel. Merton, founded in 1264, set the collegiate pattern which became standard in both Oxford and Cambridge, that of a self-governing institution in which teachers and students live together as a community. Each college was a private haven entered through a gatehouse and built around courtyards, known in Oxford as quadrangles or quads. A steady succession of such colleges was founded until the early 17C.
|
|
|
|
|
There was then a gap (apart from Worcester in 1714) until the late 19C, when several new foundations included Oxford's first two colleges for women, Lady Margaret Hall (1878) and Somerville (1879). By now nearly all the colleges are open to both sexes. This is true even of the most exclusive and brilliant of Oxford's colleges – All Souls, founded in 1438 and limited to a small number of graduates who win a place by competitive examination.
|
|
|
|
|
The college with the greatest number of individual claims to fame is Christ Church, known as 'the House'. Its original founder, Cardinal *Wolsey, wanted it to have Oxford's largest quadrangle (Tom Quad) and largest dining hall, two distinctions which it retains. Its chapel serves, surprisingly, as the seat of the bishop of Oxford. A building of the 12–13C with a fan-vaulted roof of the late 15C, it had been the church of a priory which Wolsey closed down to build his college; when Henry VIII made Oxford a diocese in 1542, the college chapel became England's smallest cathedral.
|
|
|
|
|
The entry to the quadrangle is through Tom Tower, an elaborate structure by Wren (1681) surmounting Wolsey's gateway and containing Great Tom, a huge bell recast from an earlier one in 1680. Christ Church also has an exceptional collection of old master paintings and drawings on display in its own picture gallery.
|
|
|
|
|
The main public building of the university, the Sheldonian Theatre (1663), was the first important architectural undertaking by *Wren; he based it on the Theatre of Marcellus in Rome. The striking domed Italian baroque building of the next century, the Radcliffe Camera (1737–49), was paid for from the bequest of a fashionable doctor, John Radcliffe (1650–1714) and was designed as a library by James *Gibbs; it is now part of the university library, the Bodleian, named after the man who revived Oxford's library in the early 17C, Thomas Bodley (1545–1613, kt 1604). The oldest section of the Bodleian, one of the six *copyright libraries, is Duke Humfrey's library, completed in 1488 to house the books (later dispersed) of Humfrey, duke of Gloucester (1391–1447).
|
|
|
|
|
The university church is the 15C St Mary's, whose tall spire is one of the many for which Oxford is famous ('that sweet city with her dreaming spires', in Matthew Arnold's phrase). It was in St Mary's that *Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley (1503–55) and Hugh Latimer (1485–1555) were tried for heresy. All three were burnt in Oxford and in 1841 the Martyrs' Memorial, designed by George Gilbert *Scott, was put up near the spot.
The original 17C building of the *Ashmolean Museum now houses the Museum of History and Science, which has an exceptional collection of scientific instruments. The university also has outstanding ethnographic holdings in the Pitt Rivers Museum. The *botanic gardens are the oldest in the country.
|
|
|
|
|
The original 17C building of the *Ashmolean Museum now houses the Museum of History and Science, which has an exceptional collection of scientific instruments. The university also has outstanding ethnographic holdings in the Pitt Rivers Museum. The *botanic gardens are the oldest in the country.
|
|
|
|