Rivers of Great Britain. The Thames, from Source to Sea.: Descriptive, Historical, PictorialVarious
History
Rivers of Great Britain. The Thames, from Source to Sea.: Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial
Various
Thames River (England) -- Description and travel; Thames Valley (England) -- Description and travel
The rebuilt University College and Oriel and the new Jesus may be
grouped together. They have in common the beautiful treatment of the
upper windows as a series of little gables in place of the tiresome
screen of battlements. The front of Jesus is a modern disguise, the
clever but unsympathetic work of Mr. Buckler. It replaces the old
Elizabethan front with its gateway in the fashion of the beautiful one
of St. Alban's Hall. The Jesus gate, however, had been obscured by a
heavy rusticated screen. Brasenose gained in the Jacobean Period its
exquisite dormer windows; Lincoln its homely second quad and lovely
chapel. Another fine example is the hall and chapel of St. Mary Hall.
In Merton four of the five orders of the Schools Tower were reproduced.
The chief author of all this work was a Thomas Holt of York. Among
his followers were the brothers Bentley, and Acroide, Oxford builders.
A greater name is associated with the new quad of St. John's. In this
Inigo Jones was mastered by the genius of the place, and constrained to
build the wonderful garden front. Inside the quad he had his own way
in the colonnades, but he was more in character still when he designed
the Danvers Gateway of the new Physic Garden, and plotted its wall and
walks. Here, at last, in a quiet corner of the place, where science
was beginning in a gentle way to stir, the English Gothic tradition of
building was fairly broken, and the key struck of the manner that in
the end of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century
gave Oxford its sturdy and picturesque English Classic. Soon after, the
troubled times of the Civil War, the rather farcical, but disastrous
siege of Oxford, "leaving no face of a University," and the subsequent
spoiling of the colleges by the Puritans, must have served very
effectually to snap the chain of building tradition, and make a blank
for the new ideas.
[Illustration: THE DOME OF THE RADCLIFFE, FROM BRASENOSE.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account