They call the oldest university in the English-speaking world "the city of dreaming spires", in reference to the harmonious architecture of Oxford's university buildings. Is there a more magnificent concentration of Christian and monarchically inspired architecture anwhere else in the world? To not have visited this place during one's lifetime is to miss the closest thing to Heaven on Earth.
For those of you gents who attended Oxford (a couple of you blog here), I will only say that "I am envious to the point of fierce hatred", to borrow a line from "Kipling". For those who have not had the fortune to visit this anti-modernist sanctuary yet, I offer a few pics I took over the weekend.
Christ Church Meadow, Oxford
The Bodlein Library
The Radcliffe Camera
University Church of St Mary the Virgin
The Sheldonian Theatre
The King's Arms for a Pint of Old Speckled Hen
An Oxford Doorway with Resplendent Royal Arms
Magdalen College
Balliol College
Rhodes House
The Gates at Trinity College
The Chapel at Keble College where I stayed
Keble College is distinct for its Victorian Gothic
The Dining Hall at Keble College where I ate
Inside the Dining Hall - purportedly the longest in the country
Did Harry Potter eat here?
8 comments:
Magnifique! Some of the photos are really good! Actually Oxford is a refuge for medievalism, clasicism and monarchism!
Ah! Sweet city of sacred sand!
Harry Potter ate in the dining hall of Christ Church College.
I went to U of T. Pale shadow.
We're not on speaking terms now, sir....
Wonderful show. It recalls Waugh:
"". . .Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare of her summer days—such as that day—when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft vapours of a thousand years of learning. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour. "
Ignore the above deleted comment, I forget a friend had signed into her blog on my computer. Here is the post:
Viewing these splendid pictures while happily trying some new nasal snuff made me feel positively antique. Lovely feeling.
Good god, to compare those buildings with those of my university. 1960s beige taupe brick monstrosities. Good faculty though. I am afirm believer that architecture helps set the tone for an institution. A centre of higher learning should look like a center of higher learning, not a cheap motel or a car show room.
For the record, and to clarify for Kipling, I never attended Oxford, though I was cast from no less an equally prestigious tradition. When I wrote that I stayed and ate at Keble College, I meant to say that's where I stayed during the weekend.
The aesthetic quality of these buildings is obvious. It demands less of critics and experts, who are rather indispensible in apologizing for currently-fashionable architecture.
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