The Colleges of Oxford: Their History and Traditions: XXI Chapters Contributed by Members of the Colleges
History
The Colleges of Oxford: Their History and Traditions: XXI Chapters Contributed by Members of the Colleges
University of Oxford -- History
The large chapel, now called the Latin, and formerly the Divinity
Chapel, was added in the next (fourteenth) century, to the north of
the northern choir aisle, by building two more bays eastward to the
north-east chapel of the thirteenth century just mentioned. This is
called “the dormitory,” being the burial-place of several deans and
canons; the word is a simple translation of the Greek _cœmeterium_,
or sleeping-place, applied to the catacombs of Rome from the second
century. Windows were now altered from Norman to Decorated; three
of which at the East end of the choir are again restored to their
original style. In 1340 the Lady Elizabeth de Montacute gave the
convent the present Christ Church meadow in order to maintain a chantry
in the Lady Chapel. Her tomb is between that chapel and the other on
the north-east, near a prior’s (Robert de Ewelme’s or Alexander de
Sutton’s), and near also to that of Sir George Nowers, a companion of
the Black Prince.
Important alterations began towards the end of the fifteenth century:
the choir clerestory was remodelled, the rich vaulting (probably)
added, and various side windows altered to the Perpendicular style,
which was then extending its rigid rule over England.
The great north transept window and the wooden roof of the transepts
and tower (that of the nave is later) are early sixteenth-century. But
at the end of the first quarter of that century (1524) came Wolsey’s
great scheme for Cardinal College, with its good and evil. The latter
may be soon disposed of; he certainly spoilt St. Frideswide’s Church
by cutting off its three western bays for his great quadrangle. His
intended Perpendicular Church on the north side of that quadrangle
would hardly have atoned, with all its magnificence, for the
destruction of the nave, which (even now, when partially restored) is
an affliction to the spectator as he enters the double doors.
But from Wolsey’s time the whole society became academic, as he had
intended, rather than monastic, and its new architecture is henceforth
secular. Unfortunately, it is not quite in that truest collegiate
style, or rather scale, which is best represented by the quadrangles
of Brasenose and Merton, St. John’s and Wadham Colleges; but its
hall, gate-tower, and library have been chief sights of Oxford from
their foundation. The principal quadrangles are too extensive and
public-looking to wear the old Oxford air of slight seclusion and great
comfort, of a life just as monastic as you please and no more.
Wolsey’s Hall[253] and Tower,[254] then, the stone kitchen, and the
east, south and west sides of the great quadrangle belong to the same
sixteenth century group of buildings as Magdalen Tower (1505), the
Tower of St. Mary Magdalene Church at the end of Broad Street, and
Brasenose Gate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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