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Published: August 6th 2007
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On Sunday Adam and I embarked on a little day trip out of London, destination - Oxford.
I'm not 100% sure it's what I expected. Essentially what you've got are all these buildings kind of in amongst just a small rural city. Hard to explain - The whole uni side of things, the buildings and history were impressive, but the town of Oxford aside from all of that, was somewhat lacking. I think from some of our pictures from the Carfax Tower you can see that too. But anyway, enough talking it down, I'll give you a run down on it all instead!
We paid a whole bloody £1 for this little brochure that allowed us to do a self guided tour of the town. From the outside anyway. Unfortunately pretty much all the colleges like to charge you to go in and have a sticky beak (and many didn't open their gates until mid-afternoon)... hence all our photos are taken from the outside only 😊
One of our first stops was Carfax Tower. Its the remains of the 14th century church of St Martin and for £1 you can climb it and get a birds eye view
of the whole city. And let me just say - they should have paid me a pound to climb those extremely terrible vertical spiral stairs, but anyway. So the views from the top were pretty good and it put the place into perspective, though only looking back on the pics now. At the time we weren't real sure what we were looking at as it was just the start of our big trek.
Next stop.. Christ Church College. Lots of history here! Founded in 1525, its the largest college and it houses the Oxford Cathedral, the only college chapel in the world designated as a cathedral. A few randoms studied here including 13 british prime ministers, Albert Einstein and Lewis Carroll (wrote 'Alice in Wonderland').
Above the main gate is Tom Tower which was designed by Sir Christopher Wren (who studied at Oxford I think). For those of you like me and didn't know him - he was a busy guy and had his fingers in a few pies but most importantly it's claimed he was the best English architect of his time. So the Tom Tower has a big bell (7 tonnes to be exact) which chimes
101 times every night at 9.05pm to commemorate the original number of Christ Church scholars. That wouldn't half be annoying would it?!
Anyway, moving on, possibly one of the most interesting things about Christ Church was that its dining hall is the dining hall used in all the Harry Potter movies - there now THAT'S exciting stuff! They also have some real nice gardens where Adam and I had a lovely little picnic before continuing on..
Next stop Merton College. In possibly the coolest street in the whole town as it was full of really old buildings and cobbled stones. In a nut shell, this is one of the original colleges founded in 1264 and had a few interesting members - namely T.S Elliot and J.R.R Tolkein.
Also in Merton Street was the Examination School building. Terrifying. Unlike at home where we have exams at the end of each semester these poor guys have theirs at the end of their whole degrees. For three weeks up to 3,000 students spend 6 days here writing their 'papers'. They have to dress formally in full gowns and mortarboards the whole time. Talk about one terrifying week in your life.
Ok next stop... Magdalen College. This place has the most impressive grounds of any college (so we're told) including its own deer park! A few randoms that frequented this place include Oscar Wilde, Dudley Moore and some royals. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that its gargoyles and carved figures are said to have inspired CS Lewis' stone statues in the Chronicles of Narnia.
Another interesting stop was the Radcliffe Camera (camera being the medieval name for room). It was built as a round reading room and is still used today for the Library which is next to it (it's also linked by an underground tunnel). The Bodleian Library was pretty impressive itself, housing 5 and a half million books and is classed as one of the worlds greatest libraries. It is one of only 6 libraries that is entitled to a copy of every new book published in the UK. Imagine some of the crap it must have on its shelves 😊 Also in the square next door to the Radcliffe Camera is a very impressive church - University Church of St. Mary the Virgin.
While that sort of wraps up some of our highlights -
Tom Tower
Entrance to Christ Church Oxford had so much history (while not all of it of interest to us) and the architecture in the town is truly spectacular.
Enjoy the photos.
Till next time 😊
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