Julian Barnett
Hidden Oxford

Julian Barnett | Hidden Oxford | 06.30.22

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- Welcome from London. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody, wherever you might be, from a sunny summer’s evening in London. And this is the first of three one-off talks that I’m giving over this summer, as opposed to that intense series of lectures I’ve just finished about Jerusalem, six of them in total. These three are more relaxed, slightly more whimsical. This first one is on hidden Oxford, and, indeed, whimsical is the word I’m going to use for that because I’m going to dip into parts of Oxford which you might not know about and the slightly less obvious side to Oxford, giving a historic sweep through the city. The second of those three summertime lectures is going to be on the sixth of August, and that’s going to be on gravestones of London, a real quirky one already for you for that. And then the very start of September, the 3rd of September, Deceit, Deception and Disguise, where I’m going to show you 12 items that are linked to those words. But for now it’s Oxford. And I just want to put it in context because it’s often said in fact, to my knowledge, a lot of research has been put into the fact that brand UK around the world is if people…

All the evidence seem to point to the fact that there are three huge elements of the UK that seem to stand out in that image of the UK around the world. One is London, two is Oxford and Cambridge together, and three is the queen. None of those are that surprising. And Oxford, in a sense, is deserving of that because it has played such a pivotal role in the history of the country, leaving aside the university town itself. And I should add, although the university is world famous, it’s by no means the oldest university in the world. Oxford and Cambridge are indeed the oldest universities in the UK. But there is, of course, Bologna, which was founded in 1088, 250 years before Oxford. There is Al-Azhar in Cairo, and I will be doing a two-parter on the city of Cairo once we reach the autumn and winter. And Al-Azhar goes all the way back to 970, so pretty old. The oldest university, though, in Europe, to my knowledge, is Bologna itself. So just to put into context what we mean by the University of Oxford, because it’s Oxford and Cambridge and Durham and St. Andrews, those four universities in the UK, are really rather different to all the other universities, in that they are collegiate-based. They’re collegiate universities. They are in effect self-governing. And I suppose you could call them federal universities, where power is dispersed amongst and between the colleges rather than a central control coming from the cental university.

Within the University of Oxford, there are 39 colleges, and those colleges are also joined by six private halls that are affiliated to the University of Oxford. We’re talking about 12,500 undergraduates, around 13,000 graduates, so 25,000 students in total. If we can now go on to the pictures, and there’s some wonderful things for you to see this evening, I hope. And the first of those pictures, just waiting for Lauren just to start to share the slideshow, is going to be an aerial view of that central part of the University of Oxford itself. We’ll just wait for that to come up now. Thank you. Okay, so onto that first picture, please, and it’s an absolute beauty, of those central colleges, everyone’s image of Oxford, green and lush and mediaeval and higgledy-piggedly but ordered in its own way with that central round structure, the Radcliffe Camera, which I’ll come back to later, and all those central colleges that have evolved over time around that central square, the Radcliffe Square. More on those things later.

But if we go on to the next slide, please, you will see this interesting thing. It’s called Ancient St. Frideswide. There she is. St. Frideswide was and is the patron saint of Oxford, a very important figure in the 630s. She was the daughter of one of the kings of Mercia. We’re talking about before England had been united, let alone the United Kingdom had been united. This is a very ancient image of St. Frideswide from the side of a baptismal font. At some future date hopefully, I’ll be talking about the parish churches of England, which in my opinion are the great national treasures of this country. They contain more national treasures than any museums, than any cities will ever have. More on that another time, I hope. And one of the treasures of parish churches are the carvings are the side of the ancient fonts, the baptismal fonts. This is a very, very early carving on the side of the baptismal font in a beautiful village, down in Dorset, in fact, not normally associated with St. Frideswide, but there she is, St. Frideswide. If we go on to the next picture, it’s a Pre-Raphaelite 19th century painting of, there she is, St. Frideswide.

She was an abbess in charge of a monastery. She’s sometimes called the first English feminist. Well, I’m going to come on to English feminism later in this talk and also in the cemetery talk later on down the line. But there she is sitting, the central figure there, in gold and green with a cross around her neck in the monastery of Binsey, one of two, three in fact, great monasteries of Oxford. There was Rewley Abbey, Binsey, and Oxford Abbey itself. She was a fascinating figure. And she took an oath of chastity, and the legend has it that she insisted on keeping to that, but the son of the king of Mercia, absolutely smitten by her, chased her and chased her, cast her in chains, tried to force her to marry. She refused to break her oath. She escaped and she ran. And then in the end, she ended up in Binsey, a little village outside of Oxford. We’re talking about, you know, the 920s, 930s. At which point, when he was going to force himself upon her, he was blinded in a miraculous event, which meant he couldn’t find her. She was saved from marriage, from breaking her oath, and she spent the rest of her life building up the monastery of Binsey just outside of Oxford. Now, if we just go on to the next slide, we’re going to look at history. I’m going to be returning to St. Frideswide a little later. And I mentioned the two abbeys of Oxford. The two great abbeys of Oxford were Binsey Abbey and Rewley Abbey.

Hardly anything of these remain, but there are some old pictures of them. So the next pictures, you will see what I mean by hardly anything remaining. So that is how grand these abbeys would have been. Bear in mind, the abbeys of England were all Roman Catholic prior to the 1536 dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, one of the absolutely traumatic and creative and remarkable events in English history. And what you have here is an artist impression using reliable sources as to what Binsey Abbey looked like. Now we go on to the next picture, you will see what remains of Binsey Abbey. Rather modest gateway to the original gatehouse. Next picture, please. There it is. It’s in the middle of a housing estate. That’s it. That’s all that remains of Binsey. Binsey was destroyed in 1536. It was plundered by the orders of the king. And then whatever remained of the ruins was further plundered by people in the 16th, 17th, and 18th century taking stones that had been left and using them for secondary use. I talked about the secondary use of stones in cities like Jerusalem before, where, you know, in olden times if you can use a stone that’s lying there from a ruin, you use it. So whatever did survive from the dissolution of the monasteries was soon gobbled up by buildings around. If we go on to the next picture, you’ll see the only piece left from Rewley Abbey, the other great Oxford Abbey. And on to the next picture, you’ll see what it looks like today, next to the Oxford Canal. There it is.

Most people hardly ever notice it. They walk along the towpath of the canal. There you can see some rather smart flats built behind the wall. And that gateway is the only remaining gateway of Rewley Abbey. I’ll return to the Oxford Canal a little later in a section I’m doing on the waterways of England. If we go to the next picture, please, I want to take us forward to the Counter, sorry, to the Civil War. So there is Oliver Cromwell. Oliver Cromwell, the only time England has been a republic, and he has a key link to the city of Oxford. Now, from 1649 to 1660, England was a republic. Charles I had been beheaded. I’ll return to him in my lecture on gravestones. And Oliver Cromwell took over. Oxford was central to the English Civil War because it was the great stronghold of the monarchists, and it survived three sieges lasting 2 ½ years. Indeed, Charles had been chased out of London and ended up living in Merton College, Oxford with his wife next door in Trinity. If we move on now to Charles I, the picture of him himself, there he is. It’s a famous one by Anthony van Dyck. That painting was for 2 ½ centuries, in fact, in the Brindisi Palace on Via Corso in Rome. And it was then brought by the Buchanan family back to England after the Restoration around about 1605. It’s a famous painting, the three faces of Charles I.

If we just move on to the next picture, there is the room where Charles I, one of the rooms, one of the suite of rooms, that he lived in, in Merton College for 2 ½ years. And in fact, in some of his diaries, he actually describes those beams of wood, looking up, wondering what was to become of him and his forces and his throne and his power. Well, he met a sticky end. 30th of January 1649, he was beheaded. But it’s absolutely incredible. This is a junior common room in Merton. Yet they’re sitting under the beams that Charles I would have looked at in the, well, around about 1645, actually slightly earlier during the siege, 1644 and ‘45. That, to my mind, is a nutshell of one aspect of what Oxford University is like, this effortless association with history going back centuries, yet the rooms are put to good use, into modern use. Yet just imagine what that room has seen. The romantic within me. To the next picture, please. We’re going slightly back in time during that siege. That street is called North Parade. It’s a little street up in an area called Park Town in Oxford. And if we go to the next picture, we will see South Parade. Two regular streets, but think of the names, North Parade, South Parade. Very peaceful, normally very quiet, lovely little Oxford side streets off the main Oxford roads. But the names are the clue. These were the parades, the ditches where the armed forces of Cromwell and his Roundheads and Charles and his Cavaliers would face off each other in the siege of Oxford in battle over this crucial town of Oxford.

So the name’s now forgotten in the mists of time to most people. I’m not even sure if you ask most people in Oxford if they realise why these streets are called North and South Parade, but they played an absolutely crucial role in the siege of Oxford and the eventual fall of Oxford. To the next picture, please. Another key thing that Oxford has played a role in was the Counter-Reformation. So when Queen Mary, the oldest child of Henry VIII, came to the throne, rather fanatical Catholic, and she tried to turn back the clock of what her father had done and over what her half-brother had done, Edward VI. So she started to persecute any of the Anglican and Protestant bishops and priests around the country. Now, Oxford was a stronghold again at that time of Anglicanism and Protestantism. So many of these bishops were burnt at the stake. This is the memorial to what we’ll call the Oxford martyrs. It’s at the end of St. Giles’, just at the beginning, very close to Broad Street. If we can go to the next picture, please, you can see a close-up of one of them.

There were three key martyrs, Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer. And those martyrs were scholars, were nationally known people, and died at the stake, not precisely on that spot but slightly round the corner where a cross marks the point on the road where they died. But look at the next picture, and that I found quite striking. Here is the base of the memorial, but not one person is looking at the memorial. It’s once again that remarkable Oxford thing. It sits with the key history of this nation almost nonchalantly. Most people don’t realise how important a spot this is, or as I say, slightly round the corner, but how important an event this spot marks. This was the height of the Counter-Reformation, one of the most traumatic periods in English history, which, of course, then later led to the demise of Mary and her Spanish husband Philip and led to the coming to the throne of her other half-sibling, Elizabeth I, who ruled then from 1558 to 1603, a remarkably long 45-year reign, which is considered the first British empire. So again, Oxford was the crucible of that demise of the Counter-Reformation, where it just metaphorically and, unfortunately, literally burnt itself out at the stake and then led to the rise of a reformed country, the Protestant Reformation, and moving on since then, an unbroken Protestant line. Okay, if we can move on to the next section now, we’re looking at the colleges.

I mentioned there are 39 Oxford colleges, with six associated Houses, capital H. I’m just going to dwell on one at the moment, and it is the largest of the Oxford colleges in area, Christ Church. Just look at that. This street is St. Aldate’s, and that’s a street that goes from Cornmarket, all the way down to Folly Bridge at the bottom. That tower, Tom Tower, was built by order of Cardinal Wolsey, one of the key people working in the courts of Henry VIII. And it’s massive. It’s overbearing. But my goodness, doesn’t it exude power? The power of Oxford, the power of Tudor architecture. But most important of all, the power of Cardinal Wolsey and the king themselves. Let’s now go into the college itself, seen from the other side. And there you can see the massive quad that is the quad of Christ Church. Now, Christ Church is the only college in Oxford or Cambridge that actually possesses a cathedral. The cathedral of Oxford is within Christ Church. It’s the chapel of Christ Church College. In fact, it predates Christ Church. The cathedral is an ancient church, and I’ll come to that very shortly. Let’s take another view in the next picture of the main quad of Christ Church. And all, not all, almost all Oxford and Cambridge quads are, indeed, built around these four sides. They’re modelled on the ancient fortresses and ancient castles. These were fortresses.

The original Oxford colleges had treasuries, had small armed forces to protect them. They housed incredibly valuable books, manuscripts, wealthy people. They wanted to keep the world out. So they were built like fortresses, and they behaved like fortresses. But there is the quad of Christ Church, made particularly famous in Evelyn Waugh’s book “Brideshead Revisited.” And if I can urge you to watch the Granada television production of “Brideshead Revisited,” which is based all around Oxford in the opening parts. Not to be confused with the film that was made about 10 years ago, which I wouldn’t particularly recommend, but Granada Television’s 12-part “Brideshead Revisited,” which is a wonderful adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s book, semi-autobiographical about his days in Oxford at this Christ Church College. It is absolutely wonderful. It’s all on YouTube. It’s a fantastic evocation of Oxford in the ‘20s and '30s, of an English ruling class in decline, and of Anthony Blanche, who was, to use his words, “thrown into Mercury.” There is Mercury if you look closely in the middle of the pool of Christ Church. And watch out for that phrase, “I was thrown into Mercury.” Do watch “Brideshead.” It’s a fantastic thing.

Now, at the rear of that picture, you see the spire of Christ Church Chapel, which is the cathedral of Oxford. It claims to be the oldest spire in England, and I’ll come to that very, very shortly. Before I do, I’m going to take you to the dreaded “Harry Potter.” Next picture, please. So now you can see the magnificent spire of Christ Church and the even more magnificent, dare I say, dining room of Christ Church. That is the dining room, looking over the quad towards the north side. Go to the next picture, and I’m going to take you into the stairs that take you up to that dining room, built during the reign of Henry VII, wonderful fan vaulting, made out of Hamstone that was brought by carriage from Dorset to Oxford. Imagine the wealth of Christ Church. No, no, no, local stone wasn’t enough for Christ Church. Wasn’t good enough. They had to use the most fashionable stone of its time, Hamstone, golden Hamstone. If you like the look of that stone, I could recommend you 10 towns in Somerset and Dorset built entirely out of that golden-colored stone, the most magnificent sight to behold, as magnificent as golden Jerusalem, I say whimsically and romantically once again. There is the staircase going up to the dining room. Just look at that, that fan vaulting. Go to the next picture, please, Lauren.

Just look at that. We’re looking at hundreds of tonnes of stonework, yet it looks as light as a feather. When you walk up those stairs, you could be convinced that you hold that stonework up with a single finger. Look at the tiny little pillar, that high, lofty pillar, but it’s so thin, thin as a needle that’s holding up that ceiling. It is actually an optical illusion. There are many supports within the ceiling holding the ceiling almost magnet-like from above. But the brilliance of the late mediaeval engineers were able to give the impression that all the pressure of that work was coming out of that single pillar. Sheer genius. So if you’re at Christ Church, you walk up these stairs every night, double flight of stairs under the fan vaulting, by order of Henry VII and then Henry VIII, and then to the next picture, please, into the dining room. There it is. Hammer beam roof with paintings around of all the previous masters of the college, including Elizabeth I, who was a master of this college. And to the next picture, an empty dining room, which really gives a sense of the size and the magnificence of the room. It really is something to behold. And as I mentioned before, that was the dining room used in “Harry Potter.” Okay, to the next picture, we go into the chapel of Christ Church and back to St. Frideswide because that is the shrine where the patron saint of Oxford that I’ve mentioned before, and I’m going to mention her again a little bit later in the section on the treasures of Oxford, that’s where she was buried.

Note the word “was,” because rather like almost all the key graves within, around England during the Reformation, her grave was desecrated, her bones scattered. Sometimes graves and holy sites did manage to survive the desecration. If people knew that Oliver Cromwell, that Henry VIII’s soldiers were coming, and later on, by the way, Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers were coming, a second wave of desecrations, they would sometimes take the beautiful stained glass out of the windows, they would take the remains of whatever saint was about to be desecrated, and they would store them. So there were some survivals, but generally speaking, it was rare. 95% of all the saints’ remains were lost in the years of either the Reformation period, the dissolution of the monasteries, or the period of the Commonwealth, 1649 to 1660. Massive tragedy in the losing of national treasures, hundreds of thousands of national treasures. The greatest vandals in my view after that were probably the Victorians, who then did away with lots of the Georgian stuff and lots of the late mediaeval stuff. But then as an old friend said to me, the Victorians actually saved a lot of stuff as well because so much stuff had been neglected. And they did pump a lot of money and effort into saving buildings. Okay, on we go.

And it’s Rome in Oxford. This is the last picture of Christ Church, looking from the back of the meadows. Beautiful picture of Christ Church, with the spire of Christ Church Cathedral on the right, the Tom Tower to the left. Now it’s Rome to Oxford. Why do I bring in Rome? You’ll recall that I went to Rome whilst we were in Jerusalem last time when I went to the church of Santa Sabina and compared that to the basilica of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. And feel free to look back at recordings of that lecture if you want to be reminded of that. But Rome has wonderful connections to Oxford. What city in the world doesn’t Rome have a connection to? And there is the pyramid, slightly off the beaten track, the only pyramid in Rome. There are far more pyramids in London than there are in Rome. That, again, a future talk on graves of London. That is the Pyramid of Caius Cestius. It was built in around about 18 BC. It’s in a very beautiful, leafy part of Rome in an area called San Saba, a stunning neighbourhood, absolutely stunning. And it’s still covered in its original white limestone, some of which was brought all the way from Egypt because Caius Cestius wanted to evoke the power of ancient Egypt. Now, why have I taken you here? What is the connection with Oxford to this? On we go to the next picture, and you will see that another picture of the pyramid next to Porta San Paolo, the Gate of San Paolo, one of the 27 gates in the Aurelian War.

There’s a wonderful walk you can do around Rome, which I will take you on when I do my lectures on Rome. But if we now go to the next picture, on the other side of Porta San Paolo is the Anglican cemetery of Rome. It’s like an English cemetery, parish church cemetery in the middle of Rome. And on to the next picture, there is a little subplot within that cemetery where English poets and botanists are buried. If we can just go to the next picture, you’ll see. There are some of them, artists with an artist’s easel, an artist’s paint board, with the pyramid in the background. And to the next picture, please. Zooming in there, this grave for a young English poet, it says. And to the next picture, please. It’s the grave of Percy Shelley no less. To the next picture, please. You’ll see a close-up. There we have him, Percy Shelley. Percy Shelley, of course, was the spouse of Mary Shelley, Mary Shelley being the author of Frankenstein. Mary Shelley was her pen name. Her real name was Mary Wollstonecraft. And I’ll be talking much more about her on a future date. A remarkable, remarkable woman, a feminist centuries ahead of her time, a social campaigner centuries ahead of her time. More on her another time.

But we’re now going to go from Oxford, sorry, from Rome back to Oxford, to the next picture, please. Because when Shelley died, he said that he wanted to be buried in Rome near the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, but he wanted his heart to be taken back to Oxford, and so it was. I’ve mentioned to you before the Sir Flinders Petrie, who died in Jerusalem and is buried on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, his body. His head is pickled in a jar, in a vase, and is kept in the Hunterian Museum in London. And his heart is buried at St. John’s Cemetery, Hampstead. Similarly, Shelley, his body remained in Rome, although with his head not detached, but his heart was brought back to University College, Oxford. And on to the next picture, please. It was put in the building just behind that wall. There is the memorial garden to Shelley at University College, Oxford. And now to the next picture, please. There is the Shelley Memorial. And underneath that memorial is the heart. He was a Romantic to the end, one of the great Romantic poets. There he is lying in Carrara marble on top of this monument with his heart in a little lead casket underneath. To the next picture, please, a close-up of that sculpture. It’s beautifully done. And there is the connection of Shelley to Rome or Rome to Oxford.

Now to “Alice in Wonderland,” please. “Alice in Wonderland” was written, as we know, by Lewis Carroll, but his real name, next slide, please, was Charles Dodgson. And Charles Dodgson was a writer, a poet, but in his time he was primarily a mathematician in Christ Church. And he absolutely adored these gardens, the botanical gardens of Oxford. They are fantastic, and they are right opposite Magdalen, Oxford, Magdalen College, Oxford. Now, Magdalen is pronounced M-A-G-D-A-L-E-N. Anywhere else in the world, it’s pronounced Magdalene, as in Mary Magdalene, but in Oxford it’s pronounced Magdalen. And Magdalen College, Oxford, right opposite are Oxford botanical gardens. They are the most beautiful, beautiful place in the city, in my opinion. Although maybe as I say that, I begin to debate that because there is so much competition for beauty in Oxford, in such a tiny place. And Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles Dodgson, spent hundreds and hundreds of hours in these gardens, walking with Alice Liddell, who was the daughter of the dean of Christ Church. And he would wander there, and she became his inspiration for “Alice in Wonderland.” And the botanical gardens became the inspiration for the Wonderland itself. And soon I’m going to show you a well which became the inspiration for the wishing well into which she went down into Wonderland itself.

But this is where his inspiration came from, possibly also with some help from some substances that he smoked when he wanted to really develop his imagination. There is the entrance to the botanical garden themselves. And to the next picture, please. We go into those gardens. There is the beautiful tower of Magdalen College. And on May every year, the choir goes to the top of the college and sings at sunrise with thousands of people below. This is the college of Oscar Wilde. And indeed, his room was opposite, the very bottom of that college. So this is within the botanical gardens. That beautiful palm house was designed by Decimus Burton, who also designed the Athenaeum Club in London, for a future talk, who also designed the great temperate house and the palm house and other houses of plants within Kew Gardens itself. He was the greatest botanical designer of his age. And it shows the wealth of Oxford, and it also shows the respect to which he held Oxford that he designed the botanical gardens. To the next picture, please. Beautiful pictures of the gardens themselves. The lily house. It has its own lily house, again designed by Decimus Burton. And to the next picture, please.

One of the seven little temples in the gardens where you can sit on a summer’s day, you’ll hardly see a soul, and just look out over these glorious sights. To the next one, please. And another view of Magdalen College Tower and overlooking the gate house to the gardens. They are, in effect, a miniature version of Kew in London. They’re very, very important academically because they’re a very important research facility for plants and for botanical studies all over the world. And over the years, I’ve met many fascinating people in those gardens doing research, and they come from all over the world to go to those gardens, just as they do to Kew. To the next one, please. And then we go out through the gates. And the next picture. Now on to national treasures that are within Oxford. So if we go to the first picture in this section, you will see this tower here. So this is St. David’s of the North Gate. This claims to be actually the oldest building in Oxford, the church tower. It’s a Saxon tower. And just to the right of it is a Tudor structure dating to around about 1540. But the tower itself is Saxon. It’s much older. And by the way, for a Saxon tower, it’s extremely tall. So we’re talking about pre-1066, pre the Norman invasion, with some modifications within. But that’s a national treasure in itself, but within this church of St. Mary’s of the North Gate, there’s something even more remarkable. Excuse the smudged nature of the next photograph, please.

And you can see here a window that has small pieces of stained glass within it. This was once a whole stained glass window, but most of the glass was lost. When the windows were smashed during the Reformation, the custodians of the church hurriedly saved pieces of glass. Now, why did they save this? If we go on to the next picture, a close-up, you can see it is a crucifix. And I’m going to put my glasses on here. It’s a figure of Jesus on the cross. And if we go to the next picture, you can see that Jesus is portrayed as a lily. This is unique. It is the only surviving piece of mediaeval glass in this country with Jesus portrayed as a lily. Now, lilies were very, very important. I’d like to read you a quotation. This is from chapter six of the book of Matthew verse 28. “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin.” They’re famous words. But every single evocation of Jesus as a lily, the lily being a symbol of purity, of innocence, and most importantly of all, of rebirth, every single one of those images was destroyed during the time of the Reformation. Nothing left, with this exception. This is a true national treasure. People will go into this church, which is quite a quiet church anyway, but most people will have no sense of the treasure that is within that window. And I would, at risk of labouring the point, say to you that the parish churches of England around the country are full of the most priceless national treasures such as this. On to the next picture, please, another national treasure of Oxford.

I’m now taking you to Binsley. I mentioned Binsley before because Binsley was where St. Frideswide eventually died. And this is the lovely little Binsey Parish Church. It is literally on the very, very edge of Oxford. But in her time in the 640s, this was a few miles out of Oxford. It’s a beautiful spot. There’s no electricity. You go into the graveyard. And if we move on to the next picture, you will see a well. That was Charles Dodgson’s inspiration, Lewis Carroll’s inspiration for the wishing well. There are always flowers there in honour of St. Frideswide. Another picture, please. Flowers again taken on another day. Always something there, often candles there. This is the well that was called the treacle well in “Alice in Wonderland.” Now we’re going to go into the church. And to the next, oh, one more of the well, close-up. Now we’re going to go into the church. And there we go, from the outside, going into the church. And I’m taking you to another national treasure. So to the next picture. You will see the pulpit of the church. Now, this is a regular Victorian pulpit. It’s nothing special. It was carved in, I believe, 1829. It’s of pine, nothing particularly remarkable. It depicts St. Frideswide. There she is, standing over a pool which she blessed after the miracle that blinded the man that was trying to assail her, capture her, and rape her. But the national treasure is inside this lectern. If we go to the next picture, we see another image of St. Frideswide naked, at least topless.

This was seen as too vulgar, too shocking for the Victorian laity to be able to look at when they were at prayer, so it was put within the pulpit so that only the priest could see it. Why is this a national treasure? Well, partly because it is a very beautiful piece of… It’s almost flat, but it’s so subtly curved. But the reason why it’s a national treasure is that it was sculpted by Eric Gill. Now, Eric Gill was a remarkable man. He was a genius. And I would urge you to read about Eric Gill. He was a man who was a very troubled man, a very disturbed man. It’s rather like the great debate about Wagner. Do we play Wagner because of who he was and what he’s associated with, despite the fact that his music is magnificent? Eric Gill was a remarkable man. He was a sculptor. He was a painter. He was a cartoonist. Absolutely brilliant. And he was given the commission to do this wonderful little piece for the little church of Binsley with this shocking image of a semi-naked St. Frideswide. That is a national treasure because hardly, again, anybody would know that it’s on the inside of the pulpit. The first thing I ever do when I go to a small parish in England is to knock on the door of the vicarage because if you want to know the secrets of a English parish and of the national treasures within it, speak to the vicar. It was the vicar of Binsley that told me.

He said, “Go into the church and go inside the pulpit, and you’ll find something remarkable.” And he didn’t tell me who it was by. The moment I saw it, I thought, “This looks like a Gill,” and indeed it is. To the next picture, please, a close-up of this beautiful, beautiful work. There she is. And now moving on to the next picture. There is another Gill in Oxford, another national treasure in St. John’s College. This is St. John the Baptist, a very controversial rendition of St. John. John is normally robed, cloaked, looking magnificent. Here he’s almost naked. He’s looking vulnerable. He’s holding a cheap and bent staff. It was extremely controversial in its time. Now it’s seen as something that’s really very powerful and very wonderful. And one more bit about Gill. Look at that picture of St. John. There you can see. And now I’m going to take you to the front of the BBC in London, to the next picture. And here is Prospero sending out Ariel from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” And you can see him standing there.

Again, it’s a sculpture by Gill at the front of the BBC on upper Regent Street, lower Portland Place. Go to the next picture and you’ll see Gill completing that sculpture. I urge you to read about Eric Gill. Remarkable and troubling man. So now we’re going to move on to the next one, and we’re looking at architectural pleasures themselves. And we’re going to start off in London at St. Paul’s Cathedral. There we have it. All familiar with it most probably. The dome of St. Paul’s built by Christopher Wren. I’ll be coming on to some Christopher Wren and St. Paul’s at a later date. But why is this connected to London? If we move on to the next picture, this building, the Radcliffe Camera, in the very centre of Oxford, was built both by Christopher Wren and James Gibb. James Gibb was the primary architect. He designed St. Clement in the Danes in the Strand and also the beautiful church that overlooks Trafalgar Square, the naval ensign church. So here we have the Radcliffe Camera, the round camera-shaped building. And to the left of it is All Souls, sorry, on this picture it’s straight ahead, to the north of it is All Souls, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor.

I will talk a lot about Hawksmoor in the talk on the graves of London. A remarkable architect and the chief student of Sir Christopher Wren. So here we have Gibbs, Hawksmoor, Wren all designing, three of the greatest Baroque period architects in England at that time, all having claims to architectural treasures within the centre of Oxford. That’s the power of Oxford, this remarkable concentration of beauty and of achievement in what is a very small English county town. And you have surrounded by Exeter College, by Brasenose College, by the Bodleian Library, and by All Souls. To the next picture, please. There is a close-up of the Radcliffe Camera. And to the next. And we’re looking at Keble College. Now, this was a Victorian college built in the 1820s, but the reason why I’ve included it is that it was very, very controversial in its time. Now it’s seen as a national treasure because of this slightly bizarre brickwork which was absolutely ripped at the time, and there were calls to have it pulled down, and there were Oxford dons that would go up on ladders and be hoisted up by cranes with hammers and chisel. They were so enraged by this outrageous college which was an offence to the beautiful stone colleges of Oxford that they went up and they actually chipped away at the bricks. They wanted to pull it down bit by bit.

But now it’s seen as a classic Oxford college. It’s a soaring building, as you can see, Keble College, Oxford. If we go to the next picture, you can see a close-up of that wonder. Well, I love it. Lots of people still do hate it, but I absolutely love it. Keble College, Oxford. The building opposite Keble I’ll come to very shortly, which has its own remarkable story. If we move on again, please. Another sight of that brickwork. It’s almost Tudor-looking, but it’s 1820s to 1860s. And to the next one. Now we’re looking over a wall. Look at the wall at the fore of this picture. That wall is called Dead Man’s Walk. It’s a road literally called Dead Man’s Walk, and the reason for that is that was the path that the Jewish community in Oxford would take when they would take the bodies from the place where they’re being purified to the place of their burial the Jewish cemetery in Oxford is thought to have been where the botanical gardens now are. And Dead Man’s Walk is along that wall, which is a reference and a memory and an echo of the Jewish community there.

And I do believe that Trudy has done something on the Council of Oxford and the history of the Jews in Oxford in a previous lecture. And you can see at the back of Dead Man’s Walk is Merton College, the tower of the beautiful Merton College. On to the next picture, please. The inside of Merton, an absolute architectural beauty. And to the next one. And another Saxon tower in Oxford. Again, a rare survivor. If we now move on to the next picture, the Bodleian Library itself, the beautiful quadrangle within, and a true architectural treasure of Oxford. And to the next one, because Oxford isn’t all old. Oxford has some remarkable modern buildings because so many people want to make donations to Oxford and be associated with Oxford. This is the library by Zaha Hadid, the Baghdadi born architect who eventually took British citizenship. I think she died five, six years ago, 2016. She got the commission to design this library. You can spot a Zaha Hadid building anywhere in the world. She builds them all over the world. Excuse me. This one was the library of St. Antony’s College, Oxford, which is mainly a post grad college. And there is the Hadid library within the gardens of the college.

It’s a spectacular structure inside, although it is a bit like a greenhouse in the summer and a deep freeze in the winter because of all that glass. But nevertheless, it looks great. To the next picture, please. And the back of Magdalen College, Oxford, this absolutely unspoilt wing of the mediaeval part of the college. Really, really magnificent. I’ll show you another view from Magdalen a little later on down the line with a papal connection. And if we just move on now to a couple more national treasures. This is on a little side street in Oxford in an area of Oxford, a suburban area. But this is a building that was built by Ninian Comper, one of the great Arts and Crafts architects. So this dates to between 1902 and 1916. The Arts and Crafts movement was a very short movement. It’s a school. It’s used as it was designed to be, as a school. To the next picture, please. But it has such elegance. And I wandered past, and I just took it. I snapped away. Oxford doesn’t just have the grand colleges as a boast to being the host city of national treasures. They’re everywhere. They’re dotted everywhere, on side streets such as this, this little, little school which was built by Ninian Comper. In any other place, it would get centre stage.

In Oxford, well, it’s sort of pushed out by all the mediaeval structures and by the massive and grand colleges and the libraries and so on. Okay, now we move on, please, to this. This is the Oxford observatory, the Radcliffe Observatory. It was built as an observatory, modelled on the Palace of Winds in Athens. It was built in 1777, I believe. It’s a magnificent structure. To the next picture, please. The actual University of Oxford observatory now is no longer in Oxford. It’s in Pretoria in South Africa because of the advantage of the skies in South Africa. I’m no scientist, but I’m told that, you know, Oxford has an enormous area of land in South Africa that they own. There are observatories down in South Africa. I’m not sure whether people realise that there are parts of Oxford University dotted all over the world where they need to be, so such as South Africa. So this wonderful observatory, which served as the observatory for 230 years, is now just part of one of the colleges around, and it’s a very, very beautiful place with gardens underneath it. Okay, on we go to some of the pubs of Oxford. Oxford has loads of pubs. The attraction of the pubs in Oxford is twofold.

Number one, they’re beautiful. Number two, they sell good drink. Number three, the romance of them. I keep returning to that word, romance. These are pubs where great and famous and fantastic and extraordinary people drank, as well as regular or wonderful or fascinating people. This is St. Helen’s Passage. And this goes down to the Turf Tavern. If we go to the next picture, you’ll see the Turn Tavern. And in the Turf Tavern, C.S. Lewis would drink and many, many other people like him. Just peeking up around the back is the tower of New College, Oxford, which, despite the name, is the second oldest college in Oxford. That’s a little garden at the back of Turf Tavern. If ever there was a picture of merry England, I reckon that’s it. If we go to the next picture, we’ll see The Eagle and Child. This is where J.R.R. Tolkien drank with his friends, and this is where he developed lots of ideas for “The Lord of the Rings.” That is where they drank almost every night of the week. These Oxford academics were pretty drinkers, I should add. Tolkien lived just up the road about six streets up to the right in a lovely little area of North Oxford where many Oxford dons lived and still do live to this day. And look at the next pub, please. This is the Lamb and Flag, very old building, 1620s. The Eagle and Child is even older. It’s late mediaeval.

Okay, and now we move on after that little taste, and we move on to the gardens of Oxford. Well, where would I start? Every college in Oxford has wonderful gardens, and they have large amounts of funds in order to employ large amounts of gardeners to really produce works of art in the garden. Look at this wisteria. Move on to the next one, please. And the gardens of New College, Oxford built against the old mediaeval walls of Oxford. Look at the depth. Look at the depth of those borders. These are phenomenal gardens. Look at the next one, please. Magnificent. They are kept in full working order 365 days a year. And you need to get talking to the gardeners. Once you get talking to them, you can never get away, but I can’t think of a better way to spend a day than talking to an Oxford gardener because they will tell you wonderful stories of the colleges of Oxford and what goes on and of how they keep these just glorious gardens. Again, one of the great institutions of England in itself, leaving aside the colleges, the college gardens of Oxford and Cambridge.

Let’s move on to Rory Featherstone very shortly. Look at these gardens here. Just look at this. And now to the next picture. This is Magdalen College, very unusual, deep, deep red tulips and wisteria on the wall. To the next picture. And the next one, please. Look at the depth of these beds. There he is, Rory Featherstone. He is the head gardener, or was, in fact. Now he’s just retired. Head gardener at Worcester College. Go to the next picture, please. Look at the lawn of Worcester College. He mows that lawn, wait for it, 365 days a year, including Christmas Day. He’s there at 7:30 in the morning mowing that lawn. And the obvious question, if it snows, the snow is cleared before the lawn is mowed. Every day of the year, the lawn is mowed. That is the traditional shape of the sunken lawn in Worcester College. It’s been like that for 700 years, although the buildings around it are Georgian period. But on the other side, there are two mediaeval period. Worcester College gardens are spectacular. If I was to select college gardens in Oxford for you to go to, it would be Worcester College, Magdalen College, New College. I would say those three.

But it’s a very tough choice because there are so many other wonderful ones as well. Oh, yeah, Balliol College. Oh, and Lincoln College as well. One never stops. Okay, to the next one, please. Waterways of Oxford. Well, the Thames flows through Oxford, but typical of Oxford, where the Thames goes through Oxford, it’s changed. It’s renamed the River Isis, named after the ancient River Isis. And it has many tributaries. This is one of the tributaries of the River Isis where you can go swimming. In summer evenings, many people, on an evening like this today, there’ll be many people swimming in Oxford. It’s such a wonderful thing to do. It’s a real Oxford tradition to swim in the River Isis, which is the River Thames in Oxford. To the next picture, please. You can see you can go down there, down that little ladder, and you swim at your own risk in all these places. To the next picture, please. There are also canals in Oxford, the Oxford and Union Canal. Because remember, up until 1848, the canal systems were the main ways that stuff was moved around the country. And to the next picture, and the next one. And of course the Isis itself with people punting, the traditional Oxford, everyone’s image of Oxford, I suppose. And to the next, please, and to the next.

Finally, Oxford oddities, strange things. If we can just go to… The Natural History Museum, where on this night of the 30th of June 1860, Charles Darwin debated with Thomas Henry Huxley. He debated and defended his book, “The Origin of Species,” which had been published seven months earlier. It was a massive debate which got headlines around the world, where people berated the dangers and the terrors of “The Origin of Species” and the implications that had for the traditions, the biblical traditions of the beliefs of people in this country and around the world at that time. It was in this building, the Natural History Museum, that that seminal debate occurred that really changed the place of science around the world because the debate was won by the evolutionists, and that really catapulted Charles Darwin and the Darwinists to the top. When Darwin eventually died, he was buried in Westminster Abbey of all places despite the havoc he had wrought in the Church of England and beyond for what his theory of evolution had produced. To the next picture inside this wonderful Natural History Museum. And the next, fantastic museum. To the next picture, please. And behind it is the Pitt Rivers Museum, one of Oxford’s oddest museums.

So if we can go to the next picture. Lieutenant Colonel Pitt Rivers was an amateur anthropologist, and he went around the world collecting everything he could. Look at the right-hand side of that picture. Shrunken heads, still controversial to this day. There is much debate whether these heads should be exhibited or not, but at the moment they’re still there. To the next picture, please. Close-ups, look at this. These cabinets are ram-packed full. If you’re in Oxford, go to the Pitt Rivers Museum, all free, all for everyone to see, a remarkable man. To the next picture. Blackwell’s Bookshop, humble little bookshop, or so it seems, but now let’s go in. And underneath, tunnelled out are massive rooms underground. This is the university bookshop of Oxford. And to the next picture, please. A little bench where I sit and look out. Let’s go to next picture, another fine picture of this beautiful bench that once sat in the Vatican gardens in Rome, that story for a future lecture to do with Henry VIII and the Reformation. And one looks out over the deer park of Magdalen College. What finer view could one have in a summer’s evening? This was taken last summer, last August. To the next picture, please.

St. Bartlemas, a beautiful little structure tucked away in Oxford. And next. Picture coming up now, no doubt. There is the other side of St. Bartlemas. And the next picture. They claim it contains the oldest door in England. Here it comes, the oldest door in England, in St. Bartlemas. And to the next. Oldest external door, oldest interior door into the vestry. How about that for a wonderful door? Another Oxford oddity and an Oxford treasure. To the next, please. A chapel containing many, many relics in a Catholic chapel in Oxford, the Catholics now being a strong presence within Oxford. And finally, to a few more oddities. Let’s take it to the Sheldonian Theatre, I believe. To the next picture, oh, not quite yet. Look at the left-hand side of that picture, and you will see very old stones. They’re right under the tower, bottom of the tower, old stones. To the next picture, please. A closer-up of the bottom of that tower. Those stones again are from Rewley Abbey. I mentioned Rewley Abbey before. That’s an example of an Oxford oddity where you get stones that were used in a building 1,000 years ago coming up in a building that’s in effect many centuries later. Look how the people are cycling past, driving past, walking past.

But they’re walking past secondary use of mediaeval stones put into the base of a tower, a real Oxford strange thing to see. And if we just move on to the final things, the Sheldonian Theatre where Oxford graduation ceremonies take place, designed by Christopher Wren. Next picture, please. The heads, there they are. Now, these heads are not the original heads of Wren, designed by Wren. These heads were put on in the 18th and even the 19th century. And if we go to the next picture, I’ve gone around Oxford trying to find where the original heads were. They crop up in parks. There’s one. And to the next picture. These are the original 400-year-old heads. They crop up in back gardens. There’s another one. And to the next picture. The original heads crop up in front gardens in Park Town. Real Oxford oddities that were once at the centre of the university. They were then just sold off for pennies when new ones were put in, and now it’s a lovely thing to try to find where they come up. To the next picture. Final head, sitting on a hill outside of Oxford. And farewell from Queen’s. I just want to say one thing about Queen’s College. Here is Queen’s College with an apostrophe before the S, one queen.

So this is a college that was founded in 1341. If you just go to the final picture, there I am at Queen’s in the quad. Founded in 1341, but named after Queen Philippa of Hainault who was the wife of Edward III, but not to be confused with Queens’ College, Cambridge with the apostrophe after the S because that Queens’ College is named after two queens, Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI, and also the second queen that founded is Elizabeth Woodville, the founder of Edward IV. What I’ve given you tonight is a whimsical taste of things to see and do around Oxford. Any guidebook will show you the classical things to do. I hope I’ve been able to take you to a few little things that maybe are off the beaten track. I’m going to look at the questions. There are a few there. And I much look forward to seeing you, as mentioned before, on the sixth of August, where it’s going to be quirky gravestones of London. To Q&A.

Q&A and Comments

Q: “Regarding North Parade and South Parade, do you know why there so named?” A: Ah, so you wrote that question before I gave it, so you now will have heard my answer to that where the names come from.

Q: “When did Jews start to enrol at Oxford with no restrictions?” A: I do know the answer to that, but I cannot remember the answer to that. Trudy Gold is the knower of all things to do with that, and I do believe that she delivered a lecture linked in with aspects of that when no restrictions came, so I will defer to Trudy on that.

Q: “Whose heart was buried with Mary Shelley in Bournemouth, or is this a myth?” A: I am not aware of that. Her heart was buried with somebody’s, but I’m not sure whose. But I wasn’t aware of the Bournemouth connection. That’s fascinating, and I will look into that.

“No mention of Inspector Morse.” NO, I love him, believe it or not, but I have actually been around some of the Morse sights. They are wonderful. They are classic. But go to “Brideshead,” episode one.

Q: “Why is the building called the Radcliffe Camera?” A: Well, a camera was normally a round structure. A round structure, comes from the Latin. So it’s called the Radcliffe Camera because, number one, Radcliffe was the man that put up the funds for it. He was a philanthropist and a scholar. And he funded the hospital. He funded the Radcliffe Camera. He funded university colleges. So Radcliffe is all over the place in Oxford, so that’s why it’s called Radcliffe, and a camera is a round structure. So I hope that answers that.

Q: Oh, “Would you consider Yarnton Manor who housed Jewish and Hebrew studies previously part of Oxford?” A: Yes, I would. Actually, it’s almost near the Northamptonshire border, and it has wonderful, wonderful gardens. But it is, it’s Greater Oxford, it certainly is. I’ve cycled from Yarnton into Oxford. It’s a delightful cycle.

Q: Robin, “The Ashmolean doesn’t rate?” A: It does rate. But the Ashmolean, I would say, is more on the beaten track. The Ashmolean is fantastic. It’s a world-class museum, just as the Fitzwilliam is in Cambridge. Yes, yes, yes, Robin, the Ashmolean most certainly rates.

Jennifer, thank you for joining, many thanks.

Q: “How old is the oldest wooden door?” A: They claim it is 1018, I believe, although it’s rather like people’s claims to having the best hummus in Cairo. There are many places that claim to have older doors than that around England, but that apparently is the claim.

Yes, the colleges and their gardens are open to the public. Slightly unpredictable, some are, some aren’t. Always worth, before you make a special trip to Oxford, go on Google, look up some of the colleges, call them up. Ask them whether they’re open that day. Give them a call. They’ll always pick up the phone. They’ll tell you whether they’re open. Go into those colleges. You’ve got to go in. You don’t want to go to Oxford on a day when all the colleges are closed.

Oxford Castle, indeed, it’s a wonderful one, and the Malmaison Hotel next to it is the ex Oxford jail, which is now a hotel. You sleep in the old cells. Indeed, Oxford Castle is a great one. Judith, you feel like going to Oxford as soon as possible. Wonderful, get there. And Marian, “Please…”