Oxford (England) -- History; University of Oxford -- History
The other church which is mentioned at this period is S. Aldate's. Now,
nothing is known of the Saint to whom this church is supposed to have
been dedicated, and from whom, as we have seen, the street which runs
from Carfax to Folly Bridge borrows its name. In no ancient martyrology
or calendar does S. Aldate appear. It is quite possible that there was
such a Saint, and if there was, he would not be the only one who
survives in our memory solely by virtue of the churches dedicated to
him. But the corruption--S. Told's--S. Old's is found in
thirteenth-century chartularies and in popular parlance to-day. This
corruption is curious, and may be significant. S. Aldate's Church at
Oxford lies just within the old South Gate of the town; the only other
church of the same name lies just within the old North Gate of
Gloucester. In an old map of Gloucester this latter church is called S.
Aldgate's; in an old map of Oxford the same spelling occurs. At Oxford
the street now known as S. Aldate's was once called South Gate Street.
It seems likely, therefore, that Aldate represents a corruption from Old
Gate = Aldgate = Aldate, and that the name, when it had become so far
corrupted, was supposed to be that of a Saint. But the true meaning, as
so often happens, lived on, when men spoke with unconscious correctness
of S. Old's.
The church itself, as it now stands, is chiefly the product of a
restoration in 1863,[7] but the south aisle was built in 1335 by Sir
John Docklington, a fishmonger who was several times mayor. Over it
there used to be an upper story which served as a library for the use of
students in Civil Law who frequented the neighbouring hall, Broadgates
Hall, which became Pembroke College in 1624, when Thomas Tesdale endowed
it and named it after Lord Pembroke the Chancellor, and King James
assumed the honours of founder. In the library the refectory of the old
hall survives. The rest of the front quadrangle was added in the
seventeenth century and Gothicised in the eighteenth. It was in a room
over the gateway that Dr Johnson lived, when Pembroke was "a nest of
singing birds." The eighteenth-century chapel, decorated (1884) by Mr
Kempe, and the new hall should tempt the visitor into the back
quadrangle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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