THE EXTERIOR.
The peculiar position of Christ Church, as a cathedral which is
three parts college chapel, is apparent to the most casual observer,
who, passing by the college porter in the gateway of Tom Tower, finds
himself in a great open quadrangle with a fine hall on one side, but
no sign of a cathedral anywhere, except a spire which seems so far off
that it might very well belong to some other college. He may well be
struck by that doubtfulness as to any means of exit, which makes most
of the colleges appear to the stranger as if they consisted of one
quadrangle only. There really seems no way of getting to the cathedral,
for the incipient cloisters of Tom Quad stretch in unbroken array round
the four points of the compass; and no one could be expected to guess
that the two rat-holes at one side of the eastern terrace stand for the
west front of a great church. But so it is, and on Sundays a crowd of
citizens mingle with the undergraduates in their curious open surplices,
and drift across the Quad, past Mercury fountain, leaving no doubt in the
mind of the traveller that this is a cathedral church, and he is as free
of it as anybody else. There is, indeed, another entrance from the old
cloister on the south side, which is public, though mainly convenient
to those members of "The House" who dwell in the Old Library and Meadow
Buildings; and a third entrance besides, which is, however, the private
boon of the Professor of Pastoral Theology.
It follows, therefore, that without describing the various college
buildings, which are rather outside our province, we can say little about
the exterior, except in matters of detail; for there is no close, and
the cathedral is thus far from being common property that it is hidden
in a rather intricate environment of college buildings and private
gardens. But the one feature which in part rises above its misfortunes
is the spire.
=The Spire.=--Among all the strange domes and steeples which give to the
city of Oxford such a unique appearance, this spire of the cathedral
is to the architectural eye not the least striking. Very humble in
its bearing, it seems to put forward no claim to our attention, and may
escape the notice of a hurried traveller; but it has more character and
interest than the elaborate spire of the University Church itself. Its
very modesty gives it a distinction; were it taller it would be but one
among a hundred, but as it is there is no other in England at all like it
in the quiet dignity of its low proportions. The first time one sees it
one is most struck by its squat appearance; it seems almost to have been
built as little more than a convenient stone capping for the tower; and,
indeed, each time one returns to Oxford one is impressed afresh by this
lowliness; so that one fancies for a moment that it may have subsided a
little during one's absence. But it quickly resumes its old dignity--the
kind of dignity that one sometimes notices in short people--and every day
it seems to grow a little higher. Homely and simple, as befits the crown
of a foundation which is called "The House," it wins an almost human place
in the affections of those who live near it; and never was a spell so
honestly cast, never a friend that bore so well the test of familiarity.
And its low proportions are soon accounted for. It is one of the earliest
spires (perhaps the very first) ever built in England. Thus it was an
experiment in what must have appeared at the time a very hazardous style
of building; and that which to us is low, to the men of the thirteenth
century must have seemed dangerously lofty. It was a pioneer, and as such
needed to be sturdy. We need not then regret that it is not like that of
Salisbury; it gives the whole cluster of buildings a look of security,
and it causes no anxiety to its guardians.
"This spire," wrote Dr. Ingram in 1837, "certainly accords in character
with some of the earliest specimens in Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire,
measuring in height about two diameters of its base; and it is remarkable,
that the small turrets at the angles of the north transept are made to
terminate in pyramidal octagons, similar to those which surmount the
angles of the tower. These are the simple prototypes of those exuberant
pinnacles, niches, and tabernacles, enriched with crockets and finials,
which so profusely embellish the spires and turrets of a later date.
A singular specimen of this improved kind of turret is seen on the north
side of the cathedral; beneath which is an elegant niche, containing a
statue of St. Frideswide."
[Illustration: THE TOWER AND SPIRE, FROM THE CLOISTERS.]
The lower story of the tower is Norman, or earlier, with later work
added. The belfry-stage and the spire are early English. On each side
of the lower story can be seen the line of the ancient high roof,
destroyed in the Perpendicular period, to the great loss of the exterior
effect, which Sir Gilbert Scott was anxious to restore. On either side
of the roof-line is a plain window. At each angle a circular turret
supports the tower, the turret being reduced in size at the belfry-stage
where the Early English work commences, and ornamented with a tall and
graceful arcade; an arcade being also carried all round the walls of the
belfry-stage, and its central arches pierced for windows. Each turret
finishes above the belfry-stage in a pinnacle. "These pinnacles," says
Mr. R.J. King, "are modern; but are faithful, or, more truly, servile
imitations of the ancient ones; of which not only the original features,
but those resulting from the wear and tear of six centuries, have been
too exactly copied."
The spire itself is octagonal, with circular ribs at the angles; it is
of the "broche" form, that is to say, it rises from the exterior of the
tower walls, like most others of that period. Its eaves are supported by
a corbel-table of pointed arches; and from its cardinal faces project
the four spire lights of the same graceful character as the arcading
of the belfry-stage. When the upper part of the spire was restored,
the beautiful finial of foliage was for some unaccountable reason not
reproduced. The old spire point was erected in one of the canon's gardens,
where it rests in peace.
The tower can best be seen from the cloister, the staircase window in
the Library in Peckwater Quad, and the canon's garden on the north side.
Of course, there are many distant points of view; but one from the path
between the Broad Walk and Merton College gives a better idea of the
cathedral as a whole than most.
The tower can be ascended from the gallery in the south transept, but it
should not be attempted by any but slim persons. The visitor makes his
way along the clerestory and round the lantern, which is the first stage
of the tower. Having avoided the iron bars which threaten him at every
turn, he will have to squeeze through an incredibly small doorway, and
then climb up a dark staircase which takes him, not into the belfry,
but into the spire. One can only peer into the lower part of the belfry
from the shuttered windows on the outside; but as the interior of the
spire is open to it, the whole, forming one queer-shaped room, can be
seen therefrom. The bells have all gone, as they taxed the strength of
the tower, having been originally cast for the larger tower of Oseney
Abbey (see p. 43); they are now hung in the new bell-tower over the hall
staircase. The belfry-stage can be considered octagonal from the interior,
four very short extra sides being formed by the angular turrets, which
are chamfered off on the inside. Above these are the squinches which
support the spire. Round the arcade which contains the belfry windows
runs a passage, made just like the clerestory passage of a church. The
whole structure is remarkable for its careful and finished work, the
very corbels just above the floor being heavily foliated, as if they
were intended to be seen from below.
The windows of the spire are interesting for the double plane of tracery
which adds to the strength of the spire. The inner tracery resembles
that without, with the difference that it has no transom. The transom,
by the way, is a rare feature in the Early English period.
The only exterior view of any extent is from the garden of the Professor
of Pastoral Theology on the northern side of the cathedral. It seems
unfortunate that so important a spot should be in private hands, and the
public excluded; but still a visitor who desires to go into the garden
can obtain permission by applying at the professor's house in Tom Quad.
The garden is a pretty one, and the view of the homely-looking cathedral
set in this quiet old-fashioned retreat is well worth taking the trouble
to see. The Latin Chapel, which seems to stand right on the lawn,
looks like some little village church, while the north transept seems
inconceivably smaller than from the inside.
From between the transept and the nave, near the house that is to say,
there is an excellent view of the tower.
Two remarkable square turrets flank the transept: they resemble those at
the east end, and are nearly of the same date; they are, however, capped
by pinnacles like those on the tower, but somewhat earlier. At the angle
of the transept aisle there is a smaller turret, early Perpendicular in
style, with crockets on its spire, and in its west face a niche with a
weather-worn statue of St. Frideswide. The flowing tracery of the four
beautiful windows of the Latin Chapel is well seen from here; and the
buttresses that support its wall should also be noticed.
[Illustration: EARLY SAXON ARCHES.]
=The Saxon Apses=.--In this garden can also be seen the site of the
Saxon apses, discovered in 1887 by Mr. Park Harrison. The history
of this discovery is an extremely interesting one. It was known that
two small rag-stone arches existed at the east end of the Lady Chapel
and north choir aisle, though blocked up and concealed by plastering
inside the church. Their character and rude workmanship suggested that
they formed part of the original church of the Holy Trinity, St. Mary,
and All Saints, which was built C. 727; but there was some years ago
a tradition among architects that nearly all Saxon churches were built
of wood, and the presumption naturally was that the original church
was entirely destroyed in the fire of 1002. However, it came gradually
to be admitted, even by the late Mr. J.H. Parker, that Saxon churches
were built of stone from the earliest times; it was further found to be
implied by the charter of Ethelred that the old church had been of stone;
for the charter states that, when it was found necessary to dislodge the
Danes by burning, the fire was thrown upon the wooden shingles of the
roof. Another document supported this theory by stating that Ethelred
"repaired and enlarged" the old building. Thus the presumption lately
came to be that these arches, and the wall in which they stood, belonged
to the church of 727.
In opposition to this it was suggested that they were nothing more than
barrow-holes made in the twelfth century to admit the Norman workmen.
Mr. Harrison, however, was strongly opposed to this view, urging that no
barrow-holes existed of such narrow dimensions as these doors, or in such
an inconvenient place as the east wall of a chapel. In order to put his
conviction to the test he asked that excavations should be made outside
the east wall, to see if the doorways led into a crypt or "porticus,"
since apses, used for interments, had been found of an equally early
date at Winchester and Lyminge.
[Illustration: PLAN OF RECENTLY EXCAVATED APSES.[1]]
This venture of faith was triumphantly rewarded by the discovery in 1887
of the foundations of three apses, corresponding with these two arches,
and with a third between them, of which traces were found shortly after.
The first excavation in the canon's garden took the form of a trench
outside the southern arch, and led to the discovery of part of the
foundation of an apse, which measured a quarter-circle. The rest of this
foundation had been destroyed, evidently when the wall of the Norman
presbytery was built (which, it is notable, is quite twelve inches
thicker than the wall containing the arches); but it was evident that
the archway in the wall must have stood in the centre of a perfect apse.
Similar foundations were next laid bare opposite the northern arch. Then
the earth was removed opposite the Norman pilaster buttress, which,
standing midway between the two arches, led the investigators to suppose
that it hid a centre Saxon archway. Nothing was found at first but a small
piece of concrete walling (2 feet by 1-1/2 feet) which it was at once seen
might prove to be part of the north wall of the chancel of the ancient
church, if a centre apse could be proved to have projected beyond the two
side apses. Excavations were therefore commenced further east, with the
result that the foundations of the central apse were discovered under
a drive in the garden. The missing portion of this apse was accounted
for by a main drain which had been cut across its inner side, and by
a pit which had been made for the interment of bones found elsewhere
in the Close. About the same time Mr. A.J. Evans, the Keeper of the
Ashmolean Museum, found rag-stones by the side of the Norman buttress,
which proved to be part of the central archway, a little wider and higher
than the two side ones. It now became clear that this archway was really
not a doorway at all but a small chancel-arch, the three arches being
similar to those still used in the conservative churches of the East. It
is a foot wider than the chancel-arch of the Saxon church at Bradford,
Wilts, and two feet wider than the arch between the tower and chancel
of Wotten Wawen church in Warwickshire, the jambs and arches of which
were also built of rag-stone. Further evidence of the antiquity of this
east wall is the fact that the sill of the south archway was found to
be 2 feet 8 inches below the level of the pavement of the Norman church,
as is shown in the elevation.
[Illustration: CONJECTURAL PLAN OF EARLY SAXON CHURCH.]
This Eastern plan of three apses was adopted about the same early period
at Melbourne and Lindisfarn; and, as it was not long before the death of
the great Archbishop Theodore that this arrangement came in, there is a
great probability that he introduced it from his native country of Syria,
where the churches were always constructed with three apses. The absence
of any marks of juncture upon the exterior of the walls also inclines one
to suspect that there was a passage from apse to apse behind the wall,
as there always is in Eastern churches. The whole arrangement will be
made abundantly clear from the above conjectural ground-plan of the
ancient church, c. 740.
There are indications that these three apses are not of precisely the
same date, for the northernmost arch is the smallest of the three, and
the apse is correspondingly smaller. It is therefore surmised that the
southernmost apse belonged to the church of Didan, the father of St.
Frideswide, and dedicated to the Holy and Undivided Trinity, "without
any more title and addition," while the other apses were the additions
of Frideswide herself, when the church was adapted to the purposes of
a convent, with the additional dedication to St. Mary and All Saints.
This may be the reason why the chapel in a line with the central apse,
and therefore on the site of the ancient nave, is still the Lady Chapel.
Another important point rests upon the document which states that, when
Ethelred II. enlarged and repaired the old building, the result was
that the tomb of St. Frideswide, which before was on the south side of
the church, thereupon stood in the middle. The tomb of St. Frideswide
must therefore have been in the southernmost of these three apses (in
a "chapel," as Wood says, on the south side of the convent church),
and not, as some people have supposed, in the vault discovered under
the tower during Scott's restoration. A significant corroboration of
the old document is supplied by the fact that the Norman plinth, which
was carried across the other two archways, breaks off at the arch which
leads into the south apse. It would thus seem that access was, after
the Norman restoration, still afforded into this chapel, and that St.
Frideswide's relics remained there until the Translation of 1180, when
they were moved "from an obscure to a more noted place in the church"
on the completion of the Norman restoration.
After the investigations had been completed, the earth was laid down
again, but stones have been set in the drive to mark the site of the old
foundations. Some charcoal and reddened stone which was found--evidently
a relic of the fire of 1002--is now to be seen in the gallery over the
vestry in the cathedral. In addition to this, the remains of a rough
pavement were exposed in the north apse, and some square stones in the
chord of the central apse, which seem to be part of the old altar. In
addition to the numerous scattered bones that the workmen unearthed,
two complete skeletons were found in the southern apse, and underneath
the stone slabs upon which they lay another skeleton, that of a woman
or a man of short stature, possibly that of Didan himself, or his wife
Saffrida, who are both known to have been buried in the church.
=The Cloister= now forms only three sides of a square, the western part
having been destroyed by Wolsey in order to make room for the hall
staircase. Considerably inferior to those of Magdalen and New College,
it is small and unpretentious: its tracery, of a humdrum Perpendicular
type (mostly restored), and its vaulting, which is peculiar, point to
the latter half of the fifteenth century as the time of its erection. Of
the earlier cloister no trace remains, except the door and windows of
the chapter-house. The north walk was converted into a muniment room,
much to the defacement, one may imagine, of this part of the college;
but it has now been restored, and a good imitation of the fine old lierne
groined roof inserted, though funds have not been provided to finish the
carving of the bosses. Mr. R.J. King points out that the panelling of
the sides of the windows agrees very closely, even to the character of
the cusps, with that introduced into the clerestory of the choir. The
quadrangle of the cloister was the scene of Cranmer's degradation. In
its area are the foundations of the lavatory, which was built about 1490.
Above the arches of the cloister runs a story with latticed windows on
the east and south side, which adds considerably to the picturesqueness
of the whole. Indeed, as one stands on the steps leading to the hall,
the ivy-grown cloister, in spite of its modest proportions, has a beauty
of its own. The latticed windows give it an air of mystery, as if strange
old rooms were concealed by them; and in fact on the south side there
is a curious library of time-worn theological books, which is seldom
entered, and hardly ever used: it belongs to the Regius Professor of
Divinity. The windows on the east side hide nothing more romantic than
a small lumber-room, cut up by the raising of the wooden roof beneath,
and an undergraduate's bed-chamber.
From the same position at the west of the cloister one can enjoy the
best view of the tower and spire of the church. One is close enough
to see all the detail, and yet from this angle nothing is lost of the
general effect. On a moonlit evening the effect is particularly solemn
and beautiful. From this point also should be noticed the difference in
the masonry of the south transept. The lower story is entirely of rubble,
while the upper story is partly of good ashlar work.
On the south side of the cloister is the Old Library, as it is now called,
which was formerly the refectory of the monastery, and is all that now
remains of the conventual buildings. Its large Perpendicular windows,
rising like a clerestory above it, look on to the cloister, but they were
spoilt on the inside by a staircase, when the building was turned into
undergraduates' rooms. On the other side, facing the meadow buildings,
there is a curious little oriel window, its lights now walled up, that
once contained the pulpit whence the lessons were read during meals. The
rest of the Perpendicular windows on this side are entirely gone, and
the beauty of what was one of the best buildings in Oxford destroyed.
An engraving of the Refectory in its original state is given in Skelton.
[Illustration: DOORWAY OF CHAPTER-HOUSE.]
The roof, which formerly hid the upper part of the chapter-house door, has
been removed, and, by a happy device, a wooden roof groined in the same
way has been inserted at a higher level, thus giving the old doorway the
benefit of its full proportions. This doorway has been attributed to Prior
Guimond, and belongs mainly to the later Norman period, of which it is a
fine example. The two inner divisions of the arch are richly ornamented
with zigzag moulding; the two outer divisions rest on shafts, of which
the pair on the north have sculptured, and the pair on the south plain
cushion, capitals. On either side of the doorway is a round-headed window
of two lights, plain without, but ornamented within with the same label
as that which surrounds the outer arch of the doorway itself. An ancient
painting can be made out on the north side of the northernmost of these
windows; it was traced recently, and found to be the figure of a saint.
=The Chapter-House= was rebuilt in the very best Early English period,
of which it is an excellent example. It bears some resemblance to the
chapter-house at Chester, being especially remarkable for the purity of
its style and the excellence of its detail. It would, indeed, be hard to
find a better specimen of a mediæval chamber.
As the whole effect of the room depends upon its proportions, it is hardly
necessary to say that the extraordinary genius for making the worst of
everything, which seemed at one time to take possession of the English
people, inspired some one to build a wall right across the middle. This
has, however, been removed, and the visitor has now nothing to complain
of but a want of colour. The chapter-house has been used for divinity
lectures since the Latin Chapel was restored to its original purpose;
and the lower part of the walls is now hung with curtains, which help
to destroy the coldness due to the destruction of the old painting
and furniture.
[Illustration: CORBEL IN CHAPTER-HOUSE.]
The room is an oblong, divided into four bays, the vaulting of which
springs from clustered shafts, supported on curiously carved corbels.
Two of these corbels are in the form of monks' heads, very vividly
conceived; they face each other, and are thought, from the vivacity
of their expression, to be represented as carrying on a conversation
together. The perfect taste of the rich carving on the bosses of the
roof will also be noticed. One of them represents our Lady crowned,
in the act of giving an apple to the Holy Child.
But the most striking feature of the chapter-house is its east end. An
arcade of five arches fills the entire space; of these the three central
arches are pierced for windows, deeply recessed, and having a double set
of shafts to support their arches, the inner shafts being clustered,
and ornamented with dog-tooth moulding. Each light is crossed by a
transom, with a later four-centred arch beneath. Foliage is introduced
in the spandrels, and every capital in the room is richly foliated,
nor could anything exceed the grace and finish of the carving. There
are two windows of similar character on the south side of the room,
and one on the north. There are also some pieces of remarkably fine
glass in these side windows, which one should be careful not to miss.
The remains of painting on the groined ceiling are not likely to
escape notice,--the figures of St. Peter and St. Paul can be easily
distinguished.
[Illustration: BOSS IN CHAPTER-HOUSE.]
A thirteenth century stone slab now rests in the chapter-house; it was
brought here from Rewly Abbey, where it covered the tomb of Ela, wife of
Thomas de Newburgh, Earl of Warwick, and daughter of William Longspée.
In the east wall is preserved the foundation stone of Wolsey's College
at Ipswich, the inscription on which runs,--"_Anno Christi 1528, et
regni Henrici octavi, regis Angliae 20, mensis vero Junii 15, positum
per Johannem epm. Lidensem_,"--John Holt being titular Bishop of Lydda,
and probably a suffragan of Lincoln. The stone has no connection with
Christ Church, beyond the fact that it commemorates another benefaction
of Wolsey, and was presented to the House in 1789.
A small staircase in the south wall leads up into the charming
oak-panelled room, which is used by the chapter for meetings. In the
window of the staircase will be noticed some initial letters and other
devices in stained glass which are among the very finest of their kind.
In the upper room itself, which looks pleasantly on to a garden, are
some interesting pictures:--one of Henry VII.; another of the same
king, younger, with his queen; Henry VIII.; Elizabeth; Mary; Samuel
Fell, the father of Bishop Fell, and Dean of Christ Church himself;
Busby, the terrible headmaster of Westminster School, also connected
with this House; two portraits of the talented Dean Aldrich, and one
of Peter Martyr, whose wife was so strangely made to share the grave
with St. Frideswide. Peter Martyr had been himself an Augustinian prior:
he adopted strong reforming views, and was made Regius Professor of
Divinity here in 1549. He lived near Tom Gate; but the undergraduates
broke his windows, and he moved to the cloister, where he fortified
his garden. According to Blunt, he gave up the professorship when the
undergraduates annoyed him, but returned on being made a canon. In this
chapter-room there is a good Elizabethan table, a curious old iron safe,
and some Chippendale chairs.
[Illustration: THE CHOIR, FROM THE OLD CEMETERY.]
A gateway in the cloister to the north of the chapter-house leads into
the slype, which occupies the position usual in monastic buildings
between the chapter-house and the transept. In this case the slype is a
plain barrel-vaulted passage that takes up part of the transept itself,
and forms the lower story of the choir-vestry (as it now is) within the
church. It leads into the old cemetery, whence a good view is obtained
of St. Lucy's chapel, the east end, and the chapter-house. In the garden
are the tombs of Philip Pusey, son of Dr. Pusey, and Edith Liddell,
who is commemorated in St. Catherine's window. The round-headed doorway,
now blocked up, should also be noticed: it may be one of the doorways of
Ethelred's church, and is in any case the only ancient one left.
The east end was restored in 1871 by Gilbert Scott, in accordance with the
late Norman design, of which fragments, left when the Decorated window
was inserted, still remained in the wall; but how far exactly it follows
the original no one appears to know.
An elaborate wheel-window occupies the upper part of the chancel gable;
above it is a blind arcade of transitional pointed arches, and below are
two round-headed windows. The square turrets at the angles are ornamented
with arcading in three stories: the upper is on a level with the pointed
arcading of the main wall, and similar in style; the middle carries on
the line of the wheel-window, and consists of two round arches on each
turret; the lower, on a level with the two round-headed windows, is made
up of three round arches, which, by intersecting, form four pointed
arches. The whole, in spite of its being (with the exception of the
turrets) a restoration, gives one a good idea of transitional work on a
large scale. In plan it is still Romanesque, in detail it is Early Gothic.
=The Bell Tower=, which stands above the hall-staircase, is really only
a stone case built by Mr. Bodley to hide the wooden structure which
actually contains the bells. The tower, as it now stands, is incomplete,
Mr. Bodley having intended a lofty and intricate wooden superstructure to
rest upon it. The authorities, however, were afraid of its dwarfing the
spire and Tom Tower, and consequently left the structure in its present
state, much against the opinion, as we understand, of the architect, whose
completed design can be seen in the common-room, and is so magnificently
picturesque, that one cannot help hoping that the authorities will see
their way to erecting it. After all, if every one in the past had been
afraid of overtopping the cathedral, Oxford would never have become the
"Sweet city of her dreaming spires" that we know The cathedral can hold
its own, and so can Tom Tower; for neither makes any pretensions to
loftiness. The original hall-tower seems to have stood on the same spot
before the space was cleared for the erection of Dean Fell's staircase.
The bells themselves are, with Great Tom, the only relics left of the
glorious Abbey of Oseney. They were considered the finest in England,
and were after their removal to the cathedral made famous again as
"The merry Christ Church bells" of Dean Aldrich's catch. Their names are
contained in the following line, which professes to be a hexameter--
_Hautclerc, Douce, Clement, Austin, Marie, Gabriel et John._
[Illustration: TOM TOWER.]
=Tom Tower=, over the entrance to Tom Quad from St. Aldate's, is one
of the characteristic features of the city. The lower story was built
by Wolsey, but the cupola which gives it so uncommon an appearance was
added by Sir Christopher Wren in 1682. On the side facing St. Aldate's
is a statue of the great Cardinal, in a very dramatic attitude, and on
the quadrangle face a statue of Queen Anne, placed there by her minister
Harley, with this inscription,--_Annae Principi Optimae Secretarius
ipsius principalis Robertus Harley hac in sede posuit quod illam coleret
et hanc amaret_. The vault of the archway under Tom Tower is decorated
with the arms of those who helped towards the completion of the
quadrangle. "Tom," the great bell which gives its name to the quadrangle,
and its orders to the whole University, came, with the cathedral bells,
from Oseney Abbey; and twenty shillings were paid in 1545 for the
conveyance of Tom and his satellites from the Abbey to Christ Church.
It weighed 17,000 pounds, and bore the inscription,--_In Thomae laude
resono Bim Bom sine fraude_; but it was recast in 1680, and its present
inscription is _Magnus Thomas Clusius Oxoniensis renatus Apr. 8, 1680_.
It will have to be recast again some day, for it is sadly out of tune;
its note ought to be B flat, but is not, and the bell itself is cracked.
[Illustration: THE WESTERN ENTRANCE AND BELL TOWER, FROM TOM QUAD.]
Perhaps the other college buildings are sufficiently connected with
the history of the cathedral to allow of our mentioning them. For
Wolsey built the kitchen, which is a remarkably fine specimen of the
peculiar architecture necessitated for such a building, and also the
magnificent hall, the finest perhaps in England, and interesting to
us also as containing the portraits of many of the men referred to in
this book. Wolsey also built three sides of Tom Quad. Though the bases
of the buttresses for its cloister invite the enterprising builder, the
Quad is probably best left as it is; for a projecting cloister is not
anything the architectural success that a cloister is which forms the
ground story of a building continued over it, and the Quad is besides
so large as to be unmanageable in the matter of cloisters. The fountain
in the middle is called "Mercury," because Dr. Anthony Radcliffe set up
a statue there of the nimble god in 1695. Frank Buckland, by the way,
about five years before his death, put into Mercury several golden
carp; there was also added an _Aurea Tinca_ from Austria, a superb
creature, popularly called "The Dean." The surface of the Quad was in
1665 lowered three feet, so as to give a greater appearance of height
to the surrounding buildings. Bishop John Fell finished the quadrangle,
and his father, Dean Samuel Fell, built the vaulted staircase of the Hall
(1640), which is one of the instances of the curious survival of Gothic
in Oxford, that home of "lost causes," which need never have been lost,
and of "impossible ideals," which ought to be made possible. Late as it
is, and open to the structural criticism of all Perpendicular work, it is
most deservedly admired. The staircase itself must not be laid to Fell's
charge; it is the work of the James Wyatt. Dean Aldrich built Peckwater
Quad, which is a decent work of its kind, too grim and gloomy to be as
attractive as All Saints Church, and dreadfully disfigured by the strange
tendency to moulder away that besets Headington stone, from which Oxford
as a whole has suffered so much.
The Library in Peckwater Quad was begun in 1716 (designed by Dr. G.
Clerke), and finished in 1761, the original intention having been to leave
an open piazza beneath it; but its columns were connected, in the end,
by a wall. It contains a few first-rate pictures (including an exquisite
Francescà) among a great many palpable shams, and a collection of
drawings mainly by fifteenth and sixteenth century artists, which are said
to have given Ruskin his first enthusiasm for Italian art, when he was
an undergraduate at the House. Wyatt was the architect of Canterbury Gate.
Dean Liddell built the Meadow Buildings nearly thirty years ago;
the architect was Mr. T. Deane. They are as bad as the other college
buildings in Oxford of the same period.