Chapter 2: Oxford Redux

This week I took a neighbour’s cousin from Pennsylvania by bus to Oxford, and guided her around the main places to visit there. We had a great day, and she was quite happy with how the day went.

I have been there several times, and wrote in more detail in my previous blogs: SEE Chapters 23 and 28.

For many Oxford college students, today was the last day of examinations and became a cause for celebration. I stopped a small group and they explained that it was traditional to party in the streets when exams ended. We got caught up with a group of them.

Booze & balloons included many bottles of champagne, either being sprayed or drunk.

I recommend to anyone who wants to see an Oxford College to visit Magdalen College, which is the most beautiful of all of them.

Above is the Magdalen Grammar House, off St. John's Quad.

The entrance to The President's Residence is an example of understated "classiness" in its plain beauty.

Wisteria festooning the student rooms and areas surrounding the Cloister. Across the Cloister to the Hall, with the Great Tower behind; the Tower was built in 1492-1509, and reaches 48 m into the sky.

Students celebrating the end of exams on the lawns in front of The New Building, built in 1733.

Some of the herd of 60 young deer in The Grove at Magdalen College. Deer have been here since 1705.

An ancient water pump at the edge of The Cloister, the original college quad.

One of the mostly brown-coloured windows in the Ante-Chapel. The whole effect is very peaceful, all the colours in the Ante-Chapel being subdued shades of brown, apart from a reproduction of The Last Supper on one wall.

Musically inspired carvings above the entrance to The Chapel itself.

Sculpture of Christ with Mary Magdalen, in the Chaplain’s Quad, beneath the Great Tower, the entrance to which is viewed through the sculpture.

The statue of Christ and Mary, created by David Wynne. An interesting effect is created by the holes in Christ’s hands.

Every time I come to Oxford I always visit Christ Church College and Cathedral.

The visitors' entrance to Christ Church. The embedded inscription reads: "My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage."

The vaulted ceiling of the entry hall to the Long Hall, or dining hall at Christ Church. Scenes from the Harry Potter movies have been shot in this entryway.

The dining hall in the Harry Potter films was based on this hall at Christ Church. This is the hall in which one finds the Lewis Carroll window, described in detail in Chapter 28.

Hanging in the Long Hall at Oxford is a portrait by Shee of Sir Thomas Andrew Lumisden Strange (November 30, 1756 – July 16, 1841) wearing a RED cloak. He was the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Madras and in that capacity was also the first Chief Justice of the Madras Presidency, British India from 1801 to 1817. Earlier, from 1789–1797, he had been the sixth Chief Justice of Nova Scotia.

This bowler-hatted Christ Church Custodian showed us that as one walks down the dining hall keeping an eye on the portrait, the eyes and face clearly “follow” the walker as he or she passes the Strange portrait. Strange was the namesake of my maternal ancestor, Thomas Andrew Strange DeWolfe, born 1795, my 1^st cousin, 6 times removed. It was his brother Elisha DeWolfe, Jr. who petitioned to have the name of the town changed from Mud Creek to Wolfville in honour of their father Elisha, who had been the Mud Creek (Horton) postmaster.

The image of Albert Einstein in one memorial window in the Hall.

I don't know the origin of the dinner gong.

The fire place may have burned wood at one time, but this "modern" version is gas fed.

I wonder how the students feel about eating dinner from plates exposed to a steady stream of tourists, some of whom, like me, wonder about licking my finger and running it across one of the plates!

The beautiful vaulted ceiling of the Christ Church Cathedral, the smallest in the UK. During the hourly prayer, I was mentioned as a visitor from Nova Scotia--I had spoken to the priest just before he offered the prayer of thanks. The cathedral was not struck by lightning!

This is the seat in which Charles 1st sat during services between 1642-1646, when he lived here in Oxford. It is now reserved for the Chancellor.

A single rose has been placed on The Shrine. It was built in 1289, destroyed in 1538 and rebuilt in 1889 and 2002. It once held the relics of St. Frideswide, the patron saint of Oxford.

A detail from the St. Frideswide Window designed by Edward Burne-Jones in 1858.

Another stained glass window designed by Edward Burne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelite artist, entitled Faith, Hope & Charity. It was made by the William Morris Company in 1871 and installed in Christ Church Cathedral.

"HOPE"

Punters on the Cherwell, seen from the Botanic Gardens.

Thousands of pine cones litter the paths and lawns beneath the giant J. R. R. Tolkien tree in the Botanic Gardens.

"The J. R. R. Tolkien Tree"

"Black Swan" Iris in the 1621 Botanic Garden.

"Arthurium Andreanum" in one of the tropical greenhouses in the Botanic Garden, which was built on the site of the original Jewish Burial Ground.

Lewis Carroll Photography Exhibit at the Museum of Natural Science on Broad Street.

From his shoulder Hiawatha

Took the camera of rosewood,

Made of sliding, folding rosewood;

Neatly put it all together.

In its case it lay compactly,

Folded into nearly nothing;

But he opened out the hinges,

Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,

Till it looked all squares and oblongs,

Like a complicated figure

In the Second Book of Euclid.

This he perched upon a tripod—

Crouched beneath its dusky cover—

Stretched his hand enforcing silence—

Said, “Be motionless, I beg you!’

Mystic, awful was the process.

--Lewis Carroll, Hiawatha’s Photographing, 1887

We strolled through the Covered Market, built in 1774, filled with dozens of stalls, selling everything imaginable. It opens onto the High Street and Cornmarket Street.

A wonderful, twisted old gnarly tree framing the baroque porch of St. Mary's Church, on the High Street.

I seek out the odd things, the small details, to muse about and photograph. A curious brace made of the figure of Pan.
Another twisted view, of bent bicycle tyres on an abandoned one still chained to the fence.
An iconic Oxford building, the Radcliffe Camera, built 1737-1749. Now a reading room for the Bodleian Library.

Another view of the Radcliffe Camera, from inside the Bodleian Library Gift Shop, where I was tut-tutted and admonished not to take any more photos.

The buildings of the quad of the Bodleian Library are ringed with whimsical stone carvings. Oxford is a town filled with carved grotesques and gargoyles.

This cupola reminds me so much of our own Convocation Hall at Acadia, but seems oddly placed on the top of the Sheldonian Theatre, where Oxford graduates its students. We intended to climb to the top today, but it was unexpectedly closed.

Every view one takes offers countless architectural features to notice and admire. Here is a view of the so-called Oxford Bridge of Sighs.

At the end of the day, we made it to Oxford Castle to join the last tour for “Oxford Unlocked.” We climbed 101 steps to the top of the Saxon’s St. George’s Tower, with its great views of Oxford Town. (Unfortunately, it was up here that my camera’s lithium battery decided it had done enough for the day, and shut down. I have some serious questions for Panasonic since the battery only allowed me 160 photos!) Here, from the Tower we look at the castle 11^th –century mound, built with stones and earth dredged from the river. A early castle tower originally stood here. After the tour, my fellow traveller and I climbed the winding pathway to the top.

Our guide was “The Prison Warder” a colourful character who carries the keys of the Oxford Castle cells, the castle being used as a prison from 1071 until 1996! Accommodations here were inhuman. In the olden days many prisoners died from typhus or “Gaol Disease.” There were also numerous executions—by hanging. We went into the Malmaison Oxford high-end hotel, created within some of the cell clocks of the old prison. For £170 I can book a Cell Standard with Shower; for The House of Correction, £150; for £385 I can get the Governor’s Suite. Some of these rooms come with the original prison bars; the whole thing is quite nice. We also visited the Castle Crypt--dank and dreary.

It is now 5:30, and sadly, all the places tourists might visit are now closed. My game knee is quite sore—too much climbing, maybe, although my much younger traveller is still energetic and raring to go. But instead, after this 10-hour day, we decide to head back to Bicester and Caversfield. My knee is so painful I cannot get any sleep but after a day or so of resting I am ready to go again. I want to go to London again, this time to visit the Tate Modern art gallery to see their photographic exhibit on "Voyeurism" and then to see the newest exhibits at the Victoria and Albert Museum.