Summer 2011 #5 Oxford on My Own

I went up to Oxford to check in with the guide I'll use next week on my field trip there, to wander on my own, and to do some shopping. Here I am in Tom Quad, the quadrangle of Christ Church College, the biggest and most famous of the 30-something separate colleges that maake up the University of Oxford. Tom Tower in the background tolls the hours.

These are the fellows who keep order and make sure that the students more or less do what they are supposed to and that the tourists don't carry off the statuary.

CC was founded by Cardinal Wolsey in the 1500s and refounded by King Henry VIII after he fell out with the cardinal and was in between lopping off his wives' heads. The "chapel" is the only college chapel anywhere that is also classified as a cathedral. In 1999 I went to a service here which had a lot of Latin and university dons in their gowns.

The pulpit. I just love these things. Very impressive.

Ceilings and stained glass to make you stare in wonder.

As in most places like this, lots of burials and memorials. Each of these contains a pretty obvious example of a memento mori--reminder of mortality.

Onward to the Hall where the hungry scholars chow down during the school term. This staircase is the one Harry Potter went up to enter Hogwarts. they filmed on these stairs and on the landing.

The actual Hall was the model for the one they built to use in the HP movies. Aside from HP fame, thirteen British Prime Ministers were students at Christ Church College.

Until fairly modern times women weren't allowed to attend Oxford, and the men dressed in formalwear for dinner.

Lewis Carroll was a mathmatics tutor (professor) here and wrote Alice in Wonderland for the Dean's daughter Alice.

The idea for Alice's episode with the long neck came from this fireplace set.

The Sheldonian Theatre, the auditorium where the major ceremonies of the University are conducted. Graduation ceremonies are in Latin as they were in the Middle Ages.

Gotta love the statuary around the Sheldonian.

Just a little something to remind me that I'm not in Murray any more. The street is Broad Street, and has several of the main buildings on it.

Blackwell's bookstore--old, famous, and vast--on both sides of the street. They are remodeling this part and have the painted canvas (or plastic?) false fronts over those sections.

This is an actual original Medieval building, not some modern reproduction.

This is the corner of the Eagle and Child pub where the literary group called the Inklings met, drank, and read their latest works to each other. C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were the most famous of the lot.

The cross marks the spot where three Anglican bishops were burned at the stake (Yep, that stuff really happened.) at the orders of Bloody Mary, the Queen. The area was a ditch outside the city wall at the time.

The house where Tolkien lives when he was writing The Lord of the Rings. Is Oxford a cool place, or what?

In the courtyard of the Bodleian Library, the central library of the University. Over 7 million volumes, some of them incredibally rare. Has a hundred and something miles of shelving, most of it underground.

The Examination Schools, where the students go for several days of exams at the end of their three or four years at the University to determine if they will get degrees, and if they do, with what honors.

The lovely craft are for those who would like to go punting on the river. In punting you stand at the back of the boat and hold onto a long pole, pushing it into the mud of the (fairly shallow) river to propel the boat. If you haven't mastered the knack of getting the pole unstuck from the mud, you can find yourself hanging onto a pole while your boat moves on without you.

Those of you who haven't heard of chalk paint and the wonders it can do may skip this part. Here's the actual Annie Sloan shop in Oxford.

I mean, it's just what you'd expect a quaint little shop in Oxford to look like--well, quaint.

This visit, I decided to pay a long-delayed return visit to the Oxford Botanic Garden--the oldest one in England and the third oldest in the world. It was started by medieval monks as a medicinal garden.

Here's how you have a perfect garden--an army of people constantly going snip, snip, clip, clip.
And that concludes today's excursion.

This is supposed to be a short video in Tom Quad with the bell tower if it works.