AN ABC OF NOTABLES

The Acland family in Oxford

Exeter College, which takes its name from the diocese of Exeter, has always had strong links with Devonshire and has had various benefactors from the county. Few have been as generous as Sir John Acland, the first baronet, who gave money in 1618 for the building of the fine dining-hall which still stands in Exeter College. The name Acland and the date 1618 are incised in stone above the entrance, and the Acland coat-of-arms is to be seen both outside the hall and on the ornamental screen inside. Also in the hall is a portrait of Sir John.

Sir John's descendant, Sir Thomas Dyke Acland (1809-98), who succeeded as 11th baronet in 1871, is commemorated in Oxford on a handsome memorial in the Examination Schools above the entrance to Room 8 on the ground floor:

In grateful recollection of Sir Thomas Dyke Acland Bart, DCL, and as a J11emorial to the part he bore in the advanceJ11ent of education through the J11ethods of local examination and of the extension of teaching beyond the limits of the University, this tablet is set by some who knew how wisely and how well he worked. Born 1809. Died 1898.

Sir Thomas, a lifelong friend of Gladstone, was Member of Parliament for twenty-five years for North Devon or West Somerset near his family estate on Exmoor. The estate, containing the picturesque village of Selworthy, in whose church the family monuments are to be seen, has now been gifted to the National Trust.

The member of the family who made the greatest contribution to Oxford was undoubtedly Sir Thomas's younger brother, Sir Henry Yentworth Acland (1815-1900), Regius Professor of Medicine in the University. As Professor of Medicine, he applied himself both to the training of medical students and to improving the appalling sanitary conditions that he found in the city of Oxford. It was largely due to his campaigning that a proper sewage system was installed in 1873 and that the city's water supply was gradually improved. By the end of his life, Oxford was no longer visited by epidemics of smallpox, cholera and typhoid which had been commonplace in the poorer areas of the city.

Sir Henry's likeness is to be found in the University Museum where there is a bronze bust (by Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm) near a pillar on the north side of the main Court. He had been largely responsible for the founding of the museum to serve as the main centre for the teaching of science in Oxford. For the unique decoration of the building, he called upon his lifelong friend John Ruskin whom he had met as an undergraduate at Christ Church.

The house at 39 Broad Street (now part of Blackwells bookshop), where Sir Henry lived for 53 years, was filled with portraits and mementoes of his large circle of friends.

It is after his wife Sarah (1815-78) that The Acland Hospital, a private hospital in Banbury Road, is named. Sarah is commemorated on a marble monument by Alexander Munro, showing her in profile, both in the Hospital (near the reception desk) and in Christ Church Cathedral (in the south choir aisle). Beneath her memorial in the cathedral are brasses to her and to her husband. Both are buried in Holywell Cemetery.

Yet another member of the family is commemorated in Oxford at Rewley House, the University Department for External Studies in Wellington Square, where there is an Acland Room, named after Sir Arthur Herbert Dyke Acland (1847-1926) who was Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education.

*(r~D' -(~'7 Roger BACON (c.1214-1294)

On the south wall of the Westgate Centre, nearly opposite the street-level entrance to the car-park, and overlooking a litter-strewn area of waste land is a plaque which records the beginnings of scientific study in Oxford in the thirteenth century.

The plaque marks the site of Greyfriars Church which stood there from about 1246 until 1538 when Franciscan houses -together with other religious houses in England -were closed down. The Franciscan order had been founded in 1209, and the first 'Grey Friars' appeared in England in 1224, so called because of the drab colour of their habit, which is now brown. The only other reminder of their presence in the St Ebbe's area is a house in Paradise Street called 'Greyfriars', currently occupied by Cherwell Tutors. Nearly four centuries were to elapse before the Franciscans returned to Oxford: the present 'Greyfriars' in Iffley Road was built in 1921.

The inscription on the plaque in Westgate records in both English and Latin the life of one of England's most distinguished Franciscans:

The great philosopher, Roger Bacon, known as the wonderful doctor who by the Experimental Method extended . Marvellously the realm of science, after a long life of untiring activity near this place, in the home of his Franciscan bretheren, fell asleep in Christ. AD 1292.

Roger Bacon was no cloistered academic. Having studied in Oxford and in Paris, he experimented in optics and chemistry, made his own gunpowder, interested himself in engines and mechanical flight, and wrote numerous treatises on grammar, logic, mathematics, physics, philology, philosophy and theology. Accusations of heresy and sorcery led to his being confined in Paris for ten years from 1257, and again for fourteen years from 1278, and he died in Oxford shortly after gaining his freedom.

The University Museum has a statue (by H. R. Pinker) representing him, barefooted and in friar's habit, holding an armillary sphere. Next to his statue on the west side of the main Court is one (by Thomas Woolner) of his namesake Francis Bacon (1561-1626), another, but much later champion of the scientific method.

Sir Roger BANNISTER (b1929)

Under the clock on the wall of the grandstand of the Oxford University Athletics Club in Iffley Road is a plaque with the inscription:

On this track on Kay 6th 1954 Roger Gilbert Bannister, Exeter College, President OUAC 1948-49, ran one mile in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds, thus becoming the first 111an to run one mile in less than four minutes.

The event is also commemorated at the Jackdaw Lane entrance to the ground where there is a Bannister Close.

Dr Bannister took his doctorate in medicine at Oxford and had a distinguished career as a neurologist before becoming Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1985. He was knighted in 1975. The story of his sub- four-minute mile is told in his book The First Four Kinutes published in 1955.

G. C. BOURNE (1861-1933)

On the towpath of the River Thames near the Isis public house, about two hundred yards upstream from Iffley Lock, is a memorial stone surrounded by an iron rail and an overgrown hedge:

This stone is placed here by his friends in memoryof Gilbert Charles Bourne FRS 1861-1933 A devoted friend of Oxford rowing. Fac pro viribus. (Act with all your strength)

On the back of the stone are the words:

The start of the OUBC practice course 1934

G. C. Bourne was both sportsman and academic. Known as Colonel 'Beja'

Bourne, he was the author of Text Book of Oarsnanship (1925) which \)

became a standard work on rowing, as well as being Professor of comparative anatomy at the University. There is a memorial tablet to him on the wall of the cloisters in New College. His son Robert Croft Bourne (1888-1938), also a rowing man, was Conservative )Member of Parliament for Oxford City from 1924 to 1938, in succession to Frank Gray.

Robert BOYLE (1627-91) and Robert HOOKE (1635-1703)

On the wall of University College in High Street, opposite All Souls is a prominent stone much photographed by tourists and generally ignored by residents:

In a house on this site between 1655 and 1688 lived Robert Boyle. Here he discovered Boyle's Law and made experiments with an air pump designed by his assistant Robert Hooke, inventor, scientist and architect who made a microscope and thereby first identified the living cell.

Boyle, the seventh son of the First Earl of Cork ('The Great Earl'), settled in Oxford in 1654 with Hooke as his assistant. Their experiments on air and vacuum led in 1662 to the formulation of Boyle's Law which states that the pressure and volume of a gas are inversely proportional. There is a portrait of Boyle in the basement of the Museum of the History of Science in Broad Street. Both men were among the first members of the Royal Society, of which Hooke became Secretary in 1677.  Hooke, who had been educated at Christ Church, has been credited with the invention of the quadrant and of the Gregorian telescope as well as the microscope and the air-pump. There are replicas of his compound microscope and of his air-pump in the Museum of the History of Science.

Henry DANVERS, Earl of Dan by (1573-1644)

In his youth, Henry Danvers had to flee the country for a few years after a murder, but he returned to a life of rectitude after being pardoned, became a soldier and minor statesman, and lived in Oxfordshire. His money has earned him some sort of immortality in the shape of a large ornamental archway, known as the Dan by Gate, at the entrance to the Botanic Garden in Oxford. In 1622, to quote the Dictionary of National Biography, he 'conveyed to the University of Oxford five acres of land, opposite Magdalen College, which had formerly served as a burying-place for the Jews, for the encouragement of the study of physic and botany'. He also enclosed the site with a wall and raised the level of the ground at his own expense. He can therefore be said to have founded in Oxford the first Botanic Garden in the country.

An inscription on the Dan by Gate, part of which is repeated on ,he garden side, reads:

GLORIA DEI OPT: MAX: HONORI CAROLI REGIS IN USUX ACAD. ET REIPUB. HENRICUS COXES DAN BY D.D. MDCXXXII

(To the glory of God the highest and best and in honour of King Charles this was given by Henry, Earl of Dan by, as a gift for the use of the University and of the nation. 1632. )

The date 1632 is at variance with one of the three statues that adorn the Dan by Gate. These represent Charles I and Charles II (both in Roman dress) and Lord Dan by (bust), but only Charles I and Dan by were contemporary with the gate: Charles II did not ascend the throne until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. In fact, all three statues were added after the restoration, paid for, it is said, by a fine imposed on Anthony Wood for a libel on the Earl of Clarendon.

Dan by is also remembered in the name of Danvers Road in Rose Hill.

He is buried in Dauntsey Church, Wiltshire, (four miles south-east of Malmesbury) where he has a handsome marble monument.

Lord DESBOROUGH (Sir William Grenfell) (1855-1945)

When Iffley Lock was rebuilt in 1924, it was eminently appropriate that the foundation-stone should be laid by Lord Desborough. He was Chairman of the Thames Conservancy Board for thirty-two years, he spent some years as a Member of Parliament, and he served on no fewer than 115 committees. But public service represented only a part of this remarkable man: his real interest in life was sport. As an undergraduate

at Balliol College, he had been President both of the OU Athletic Club and of the OU Boat Club (rowing in two Boat Races), and his later exploits included twice swimming the pool below the Niagara Falls, climbing the Matterhorn; sculling from Oxford to London in twenty-two hourst stroking an eight across the English Channel holding the punting championship of the Thamest and shooting game in the Canadian Rockiest in India and in Africa. He was also Chairman of the KCC and of the Lawn Tennis Association.

As well as appearing on the foundation stone of Iffley Lock, his name is also perpetuated on a bronze Starting-Ring which he presented to the OU Boat Club at the same time that the lock was built. The Ring is set into the nose of a bronze bull's head to be found at the foot of the steps of the small stone bridge the 'Desborough Bridge') just up-river from Iffley Lock.

Lord Desborough's name also appears on the foundation-stone of Godstow Lock. There is Desborough Crescent named after him in Rose Hill.

The Rev. Charles L.  DODGSON ('Lewis Carroll') <1832-98)

A shop sign should not qualify as a plaque, but when the shop is Alice's Shop, the Old Sheep Shop portrayed in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, there is some justification for promoting the sign to the status of a plaque. The shop is to be found opposite the entrance to the Christ Church Memorial Garden at 83 St Aldate's, in a small fifteenth-century building which was restored in 1965. Now a souvenir shop, specialising in memorabilia of Alice in Wonderland, it was once a sweet-shop where The Rev. Charles Dodgson, mathematician and a lifelong member of Christ Church, used to buy sweets for Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean. In Through the Looking Glass, written for the real Alice, he wove the shop into the narrative, transforming the old shopkeeper into a sheep who sat knitting with lots of needles. In 1870, Sir John Tenniel visited the shop to make sketches for the illustration which appeared in the first edition of the book in 1872.

There is a portrait of Charles Dodgson by Sir Hubert von Herkomer in Christ Church Hall, and an Alice Window has recently been installed there.

He is also remembered in the name Dodgson Road off Barns Road, Cowley.

An admirable illustrated account of the Oxford background to the Alice stories is given in Mavis Batey's Alice's Adventures in Oxford  Pitkin, 1980).

Olive GIBBS

Olive Gibbs entered the Oxford political field in 1953, and during the next thirty-three years until her official retirement in 1986 she held office at one time or another as City Councillor, Sheriff, Lord Mayor twice), Deputy Lieutenant, County Councillor and Chairman of the Oxfordshire County Council. She was made an Honorary Freeman both of the City of Oxford and of the City of London Her original concern was to promote nursery education but she espoused many other causes, especially those which bettered the lot of the underprivileged. Not afraid to be dubbed a rebel, she strongly opposed military action at Suez in 1956, and is a strong supporter of CND. In 1986 she was nominated for the Frank Cousins Peace Award.

Three inscriptions have been discovered in Oxford bearing her name. One is noted under 'Twin Cities' on page 88. The others are on buildings named after her:

A plaque in the foyer of the Gibbs Building in Oxford Polytechnic, Headington:

The Gibbs Building was opened on 16 Nay 1975 by Councillor  Mrs Olive Gibbs, Lord Mayor of Oxford

A plaque on the wall of Gibbs Crescent, Osney, near the cemetery which adjoins the railway-line (best approached from Kill Street):

Gibbs Crescent was opened on 3 Nay 1985 by Councillor  Mrs Olive Gibbs, Chairman of the Oxfordshire County Council

Edmund HALLEY (1656-1742)

To the left of the front door of 7 New College Lane is a wooden board incised with the inscription:

Edmund Halley, Savilian Professor of Geometry 1703- 1742, lived and had his observatory in this house.

The box-shaped observatory, which was built at Halley's own request, still adorns the roof of the house.

Halley's name is perpetuated in Halley's Comet, which he correctly predicted as recurring once every seventy-six years and which last appeared in 1986; but Sir Edmund Halley was not just a star-gazer. He combined his knowledge of astronomy and mathematics with his ability as a navigator and sea-captain to direct sea-voyages during which he recorded variations in the earth's magnetic field. He also recommended the observation of the transits of Venus with a view to determining the sun's parallax.

There are portraits of Halley by Thomas Kurray in his old college of Queen's and in the Bodleian Library. As well as being Professor of Geometry at Oxford, he was Secretary of the Royal Society from 1713 to 1721, and he was appointed Astronomer Royal in 1720.

An attractive monument to him was erected in 1986 on the wall of the south walk of the cloisters of Westminster Abbey

Franz Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809)

Not all patrons in the lounge bar of The Royal Oak public house in Woodstock Road, opposite the entrance to the Radcliffe Infirmary, notice a stained-glass roundel set into the woodwork above a doorway, which portrays a bewigged head bearing the name HAYDN.

Haydn visited Oxford in 1791, during the first of his visits to England, to receive a doctorate of music from the University. It was then obligatory for recipients of degrees in music to submit an 'Exercise' to be performed in the Sheldonian Theatre at the degree ceremony. As part of his exercise, Haydn wrote an ingenipus palindromic canon in three parts (the manuscript of which is usually on display in the Divinity School), and performed the so-called 'Oxford' Symphony, No.92 in G. He confided to his notebook that he 'had to pay 1~ guineas for having the bells rung at Oxforth in connection with my doctor's degree and '!i; a guinea for the robe. The trip cost 6 guineas', and he confessed that he felt silly walking about the streets of Oxford for three whole days wearing his red-and-white robes; but he regarded the expense as worthwhile because he 'gained the acquaintance of the first men in the land and had entrance to the greatest houses'.

There is no suggestion that he ever stayed at The Royal Oak. A possible explanation of the origin of the roundel is that the inn may have been the meeting-place of one of the music-clubs that are known to have existed in Oxford in the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, and the members probably commissioned the roundel to commemorate Haydn's visit to Oxford.

There is another portrait of Haydn in the fine collection of portraits of musicians housed in the Faculty of Music, St Aldate's.

Professor Sir Cyril I.  HINSHELWOOD (1897-1967)

On the east side of St Giles, not far from the Martyrs' Memorial, is a back entrance to Trinity College, protected by a car-barrier. On a wall beyond the arch is a large plaque:

Here stood the laboratory where between 1926 and 1941 Professor Sir Cyril Hinshelwood, Fellow of Trinity College, Nobel Laureate in chemistry, President of the Royal Society, carried out his experiments on the kinetics of chemical reactions.

Professor Hinshelwood was awarded the Order of Merit in 1960; and he must have been the first President of the Royal Society to have been simultaneously President of the Classical Association.

Thomas Edward LAWRENCE ('Lawrence of Arabia' ) (1888-1935)

The trail of T. E. Lawrence in Oxford begins at his parents' home in North Oxford, 2 Polstead Road, which was 'home' to him for 25 years from 1896 when, at the age of eight, he arrived in Oxford with his family. At the end of the garden is a bungalow which was converted from a garden shed by Lawrence's parents as a study-cum retreat where he could retire to write. On the front wall of the house is a plaque which reads:

This house was the home of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) from 1896- 1921 This plaque was installed by Elinor Phillips and C. Greening jointly with Jesus and All Souls Colleges.

The young Lawrence ('Ned' to his family and friends) attended school at the former Oxford High School for Boys on the corner of George Street and New Inn Hall Street, where a bronze relief by Eric Kennington was later placed with his portrait in profile and the words:

Lawrence of Arabia. OHS 1896-1907.

The bronze was unveiled in 1936 by his friend and admirer Winston Churchill. In 1966, when the school combined with Southfield School to form Oxford School, the bronze was transferred to Oxford School in Glanville Road, where it may be seen on the wall just inside the main entrance. The school also has a statuette of Lawrence sculpted by Lady Scott. A school house, Lawrence House, was named after him and is still retained in Oxford School.

From school, Lawrence gained an Exhibition to Jesus College, Oxford, where there are still signs of his presence:

-On the wall under the archway of the main entrance, just outside the Porters' Lodge, is a bronze plaque with a Latin inscription:

1907-1910

The quotation is from Proverbs 9.1, and is the origin of the title of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence's account of the Arab Revolt during the 1914-18 War and of the part that he himself played in it.

-Just inside the Chapel is a bronze bust by Eric Kennington, a replica of the one in St Paul's Cathedral.

In the Hall there is a portrait of him in Arab dress, a copy of the original by Augustus John in the Tate Gallery.

-Jesus College also has a sketch by James McBey for a portrait now in the Imperial War Museum.

The years between his leaving Jesus College and the outbreak of the Great War, Lawrence spent mainly on archaeological work at Carcemish in Syria. He had already presented to the Ashmolean Museum a set of brass rubbings and a collection of medieval pots (some of which are on display in the Medieval Room) which he had collected as a schoolboy and as an undergraduate in Oxford; and on his return from Syria, he presented the museum with some of his archaeological finds which included Hittite seals. The Ashmolean also has an Arab robe (zebun) of woven brocade with gold and white vertical stripes, which belonged to Lawrence, as well as three portraits. These are of Lawrence as 'Aircraftsman J. H. Ross' in 1922 (by William Roberts) and two by Augustus John (1929 and 1935) which also show him in uniform.

Another possession of Lawrence's is displayed in the museum of the History of Science in Broad Street, where a camera, made specially for him in 1910 for archaeological work, is to be found in a display-case with other cameras in the Optical Gallery on the ground floor.

On his return from the Middle East at the end of the Great War, Lawrence was elected a Fellow of All Souls, where he occupied a first-floor room with a bay-window overlooking High Street near the junction with Catte Street, while working on the manuscript of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. All Souls have memorabilia including his gold dagger, his Arab headcloth and head-rope (aqal), a bronze head by Lady Scott (Lady Kennett), and portraits by Augustus John (1919) and Eric Kennington (1921)

In 1922, Lawrence enlisted in the Royal Air Force under the assumed name of J. H. Ross, and later changed his name again to T. E. Shaw. He served in both the RAF and in the army until 1935 when, soon after his retirement from the services, he was killed in a motor-cycling accident. From the time of his joining the services, his contacts with Oxford became more and more tenuous, and those who wish to pursue his trail must look elsewhere, especially in Dorset.

During the last six years of his life, Lawrence's home was a cottage, Clouds Hill (now a National Trust property), a mile and a half from Bovington Camp in Dorset. He lies buried in the village of Moreton in a small cemetery near the parish church of St Nicholas. A fine memorial to him by Eric Kennington was later placed in the Saxon church of St Martin in nearby Wareham. It represents Lawrence as a recumbent life-size figure wearing Arab dress, holding his gold dagger, with his head resting on a camel saddle. By his side are three books he had carried with him to Arabia, The Oxford Book of English Verse, The Greek Anthology and Malory's Morte d 'Arthur.

Clive Staples LEWIS (1898-1963)

On the wall of the back room in the Eagle and Child public house in St Giles is a board with the legend:

his brother W. H. Lewis, J. R. R.  Tolkien, Charles Williams and other friends met every Tuesday .morning between the years 1939-1962 in the back room of this their favourite pub. These men, popularly known as the 'Inklings', met here to drink beer and to discuss, among other things, the books they were writing.

Photographs of the 'Inklings' adorn the walls of the room.

C. S. Lewis, medievalist, Christian apologist and author, was an undergraduate at University College and later (1924-54) a Fellow of Magdalen College. He spent the last ten years of his life as Professor at Cambridge, but he retained his house in what is now known as Lewis Close off Kiln Lane. He is buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry.

Lewis's friend Charles Williams (1886-1945) poet and author, is buried in Holywell Cemetery beneath a yew tree near the north wall. (For Tolkien, see page 86.)

Harold MACMILLAN (Lord STOCKTON) , (1894-1986)

Harold Macmillan was educated at Balliol College where there is a portrait of him in the Hall. He was Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, and in 1960 he was elected Chancellor of Oxford University, and held this office until his death. He was created Earl of Stockton on his ninetieth birthday in 1984.

During his term of office as Chancellor, the headquarters of the university administration moved from the Clarendon Building in Broad Street to new offices in Wellington Square. His unusual double portrait by Bryan Organ hangs just inside the Wellington Square entrance to the University Offices, and a statue is to be erected in the Square.

Pembroke College named a new building after him in 1977, and several other colleges have inscriptions recording ceremonies which he performed. One of these, to be found in Magdalen College, is recorded on page 26.

There used to be a plaque to him in Parker's Bookshop (now Blackwell's Art & Poster Shop) in Broad Street, but when Parkers ceased trading in Broad Street in 1988 after 257 years there, they took the plaque with them to their offices in Summertown, where it is no longer on public view. The inscription reads:

This plaque was unveiled on October 16th 1964 by The Right Honourable Harold XacJ11illan PC FRS, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, to comme111Drate the rebuilding of Parker's Bookshop which has been on or near this site since 1731.

William Richard MORRIS (Lord NUFFIELD), (1877-1963)

Lord Nuffield, manufacturer of motor-cars and founder of Morris Motors in the Oxford suburb of Cowley, devoted his vast fortune to medical and educational enterprises. After him are named the Nuffield Institute for Medical Research, the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and Nuffield College.

The foundation-stone of the college was laid in 1949 by Earl Halifax, who was then Chancellor of the University, and the college was completed in 1962, only a year before its founder's death. A portrait of Nuffield by Sir Arthur Cope hangs in the Hall. Lord Nuffield lived comparatively frugally at Huntercombe Lodge (on A423 near Nettlebed) which is preserved as it was in his lifetime and is occasionally open to the public. The name Nuffield he took from a village near Huntercombe Lodge.

Two plaques in Oxford recall his modest origins:

-On the wall of a house at 16 James Street (between Cowley Road and Iffley Road) is a metal plaque with the inscription:

William Morris, later Lord Nuffield, lived here 1896-1903. -Etched on the glass door of 48 High Street is the legend:

William Richard Morris, later Lord Nuffield, 1877-

1963, first used this shop in his business as a cycle- maker and repairer from which he developed the motorcar enterprise which was to benefit .millions by the philanthropic benevolence of its founder.

On the corner where Longwall Street joins Holywell Street, the red- brick facade of his first garage has been preserved by New College with a permanent window-display of illustrated material on Morris cars.

Portraits of him by Frank Eastman are to be found in the Radcliffe Infirmary and in the Assembly Room of the Town Hall; and the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre has a portrait by John Wheatley on the stairs leading from the entrance foyer.

At the entrance to what is now D Block of Oxford Polytechnic is a foundation-stone (currently concealed behind a vending-machine) with the words:

This stone was laid by the Right Honourable, The Lord .Nuffield, GEE, April 51954

A road in Wood Farm was named after him in 1953.

John Henry NEWMAN (1801-90)

The life of John Henry Newman was centred in Oxford from the time when he entered Trinity College as an undergraduate in 1816 until he was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845.

In his old age, his old college of Trinity made him an Honorary Fellow. In the college Hall is a portrait by W. W. Ouless and in the garden stands a bronze bust (by A. Broadbent) on a plinth inscribed with the words:

John Henry, Cardinal Newman 1801-1890

On graduating from Trinity in 1822, he was elected Fellow of Oriel College where there are various portraits of him including the original of the one by W. W. Ouless in the Hall and another by George Richmond in the Senior Common Room [not accessible] and a statue in St Mary's Quadrangle. His rooms were in the corner of the Front Quad next to the chapel.

Another college with a lot of Newman material is Keble by virtue of the fact that Newman was closely connected with John Keble during his years in Oxford. In the hall is a portrait in oils by William T Roden, and in the Senior Common Room is a watercolour by Sir William Ross and a marble bust by Thomas Wooner. [Not accessible].

From 1828 to 1843 Newman was Vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin which during his incumbency became the centre of the Tractarian Movement, and where his preaching drew large congregations. A framed notice on a pillar near the pulpit gives some account of his connection with the church and with the Oxford Movement. Off the Old Library is a John Henry Newman Room. His mother is buried in a vault beneath the chancel and is commemorated on a small stone under the high altar, marked with the initials 'IN' .

An outlying chaplaincy of St Mary's Church was the village of Littlemore which lies south-east of Oxford just beyond the modern ring- road and which is now within the city boundary.  Littlemore was to become a place of increasing importance in Newman's life. When he was appointed to St Mary's, the village had no church of its own, and its inhabitants were supposed to attend services in St Mary's three miles away. Newman soon set about building both a church and a school, and the foundation stone of the present Anglican parish church of St Mary & St Nicholas in Littlemore was laid in 1835 by Newman's mother, to whom there is a memorial (by the sculptor Westmacott) on the north wall of the nave showing the church in process of erection. On the west wall of the church is a framed copy of the manuscript of one of Newman's best- known hymns, Lead, kindly Light, which he composed in 1833 on his way home from Sicily where he had been taken seriously ill while on holiday. For ten years, Newman conducted services and preached in this church.

But it is not in the parish church of Littlemore that the true spirit of Newman resides. To capture that, it is necessary to visit a set of buildings in nearby College Lane, now known as The College, which formerly consisted of a barn and some stables on which Newman took out a lease in 1842. Some of the buildings had already been converted into cottages, and Newman converted the barn into a library and another room into an oratory chapel. He called it his Parsonage House, but Oxford knew it as 'The Monastery'. It has also been variously known as The Priory, the Reading Room and as 'Mr Newman's cottages'. Here Newman lived during his last few years as an Anglican, usually in the company of fellow Tractarians, and here he was received into the Roman Catholic Church.

The 'College' buildings were put to other uses after Newman's departure and some fell into disrepair, but they were eventually acquired by members of the Birmingham Oratory which Newman had founded after leaving Oxford. Today they have been restored and converted into a permanent memorial to Newman and have become a place of pilgrimage for Catholics. In the garden is a bust in lead by Rosamund Fletcher, depicting him as he was in 1845; in the former library are memorabilia and reproductions of portraits; and the little oratory chapel has been restored to its original condition.

Set into the outside wall of The College near the entrance to College Lane is an inconspicuous stone inscribed with the words:

John Henry Newman, Fellow of Oriel College, Vicar of St Mary the Virgin, afterwards Cardinal, used this building in the years 1842-6 as a place of retirement, study and prayer.

Nearby is the new Catholic church dedicated to The Blessed Dominic Barberi, the Italian priest who received Newman into the Roman Church in 1845. Other reminders of his presence in the area are the names of Newman Road and Cardinal Close, both on the Oxford side of the ring- road.

Cecil John RHODES (1853-1902)

Son of the vicar of Bishops Stortford, Cecil Rhodes was sent as a young man to South Africa where, it was thought, the climate would benefit his weak health. It was not long before he had made a vast fortune at the Kimberley diamond diggings. At the age of twenty-eight he returned to England and entered Oriel College, Oxford, as a student. He eventually took his degree, and in 1899 Oxford gave him an honorary degree as a Doctor of Common Law. He did not forget the University or his old college in spite of his subsequent preoccupation with the development of Southern and Central Africa.

His benefaction to Oriel College resulted in the Rhodes Building fronting the High Street opposite St Mary the Virgin Church. Designed by Basil Champneys, the building is festooned with statues of King Edward VII and King George V and sundry provosts and benefactors of the College (mainly bishops), all surmounted by the figure of Rhodes himself. The Latin inscription records that the building was erected as the result of his munificence:

e Larga XVnIfICentIa CaeCILII rhoDes

The large letters of the inscription (LMVIICICCILIID) are all Roman numerals, which form a chronogram of the year in which the building was completed. When arranged in descending order (MDCCCLLVIIIIII), (and if '11' is accepted as 'C', and 'VIIIIII' as 'XI'), they produce the date MDCCCCXI (1911). +

In addition to his statue facing High Street, the college has a portrait of him by Tennyson Cole.

Nearby, at 6 King Edward Street, there is a large metal plaque on the wall of the first floor, with a portrait bust of Rhodes, beneath which is the inscription:

In this house, the Rt. Hon Cecil John Rhodes kept academical residence in the year 1881. This memorial is erected by Alfred Mosely in recognition of the great services rendered by Cecil Rhodes to his country.

His main monument in Oxford is Rhodes House in South Parks Road, built in 1929 as the headquarters of the Rhodes Trust which administers the Rhodes Scholarships and other benefactions left by Rhodes to the University. Rhodes House yields a particularly rich crop of inscriptions. Running along the facade at the back (south side) of the building in large letters are the Latin words:

(This house was built to be a perpetual reminder of the name and example of Cecil John Rhodes to the Oxford he loved).

On the paved terrace beneath the south facade is a circular slab with the inscription:

On the west wall is a Craftsmen's Stone, sometimes hidden by shrubs, with another Latin inscription recalling the names of the architect (Sir Herbert Baker) and of the builders and craftsmen who constructed and decorated the building.

Over the bronze entrance-door is an emblematic ship of state named GOEDE HOOP ('Good Hope') recalling the name of the ship of the Dutch pioneer Van Riebeck and the name given to the Cape Peninsular.

Inside Rhodes House are other inscriptions in Latin and Greek, one of which is to be found on the floor just inside the entrance, with badly worn lettering:

M H L\E 1 L l<ATTNO<t>Oe6L ElLlTJl (No admittance to smokers)

The phrase is a parody of a reputed inscription outside Plato's Academy. which read 'No admittance to innumerates'. It is also reminiscent of a quotation from Virgil which was placed over the entrance to the Vatican Museums in the sixteenth century: PROCUL ESTE PROFANI (No admittance to the common herd)

Rhodes House has numerous likenesses of Rhodes including a portrait by Edward Romilles and two larger-than-life busts in marble and in bronze.

The Rhodes Scholarships are also remembered in the Examination Schools in High Street on a tablet at the foot of the stairs leading to the the North and South Writing Schools:

This tablet commemorates the foundation AD 1902 of the Rhodes Scholarships by the mun1ficence of the Rt. Honourable Cecil John Rhodes, XA, DCL, sometime of Oriel College

An incident that had occurred in South Africa shortly before Rhodes left there for Oxford is recalled on an inscription in Balliol College. On the wall midway between the entrances to Staircases XIII and XIV in the Garden Quadrangle is an incised likeness in profile of W. E. Gladstone,* then Prime Minister, with the words

This is a garbled allusion to the defeat of British troops by the Boers at Majuba Hill, Natal, on 27th February 1881. lot only did Gladstone refuse to satisfy public demand for retaliation, but in a gesture of misplaced magnanimity he actually gave in to the Boers by restoring the Transvaal to their control, an act that was interpreted as a sign of abject surrender both by the Boers and by Gladstone's political enemies at home.

+ Other chronograms in Oxford include the Hebrew inscription referred to on page 8 and two further Latin inscriptions:

-over the main entrance to St Edmund Hall in Queen's Lane: sanCtVs edXVndVs hVIVs aVLae LVX

(St Edmund, the light of this Hall)

Here the Roman numerals (except for the two letters 'd' in 'edmundus', which are not in capitals) add up to 1246, the date of the canonisation of St Edmund of Abingdon from whom St Edmund Hall takes its name.

-on a wrought-iron gate next to the Old Lodge at the side entrance to Holywell Cemetery:

(This gate was presented to the college by one of its members)

The Roman numerals are in fact indicated on the gate not by capitals but by being picked out in gold lettering. They add up to the year 1973. The college referred to is St Cross, which was founded here in 1965 and which moved to St Giles after acquiring a long lease on the Pusey House site in 1979.

There is a more conventional portrait of Gladstone by Sir John Millais in the Hall of his old college, Christ Church; and marble busts of him include one by Thomas Woolner in the Combe Gallery on the top floor of the Ashmolean Museum and another in the Debating Chamber of the Oxford Union. The Union also has a Gladstone Room named after him.

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900)

Opposite the Fishes Inn in North Hinksey is a picturesque thatched cottage, on the wall of which is a plaque:

Ruskin Cottage John Ruskin, Blade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, mentioned this cottage and the beauty of its surroundings where in 1874 he encouraged undergraduates to improve the road through the village and thus to "feel the pleasure of useful muscular work". The Friends of North Hinksey 1978.

John Ruskin, writer, artist, art critic and social reformer, had close connections with Oxford from 1836, when he came up to Christ Church as an undergraduate, until 1884, when he retired as first Slade Professor of Fine Art. He gives his name to the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (next to the Examination Schools in High Street), which he founded as The Drawing School, and to Ruskin College (next to Worcester College in Walton Street) and its residential annexe, Ruskin Hall, in Old Headington; and his influence on the architecture of Oxford may be seen in the decoration of the University Museum and of the Victorian gothic houses of North Oxford with their turrets, castellations, balconies and stained glass.

Ruskin's initial interest in art and architecture developed, via an appreciation of the value of craftsmanship, into an interest in conditions of work and into a belief in the dignity of manual labour. He succeeded in persuading students who attended his lectures on art to turn their hand to mending the road in North Hinksey, but the real working man had no truck with such idealism. Nevertheless, the disinterest of the working classes did not prevent an American, Mr. W. Vrooman, from founding Ruskin College in 1899 'in order to promote for working men facilities for residence and study of historical, social and economic subjects'.

There is a marble bust of Ruskin by Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm in the Ruskin School of Drawing, and the Ashmolean Museum has a portrait (not on display) by D. G. Rossetti as well as a terracotta copy of the bust. The Ashmolean also has a Ruskin Lecture Theatre named after him. Corpus Christi College, where he was made an honorary Fellow in 1871, also has memorabilia

During the last years of his life, Ruskin retired to the Lake District where his beautifully situated house, Brantwood, at the head of Coniston Water, has been preserved as a memorial to him and is open to the public. Another Ruskin memorial in the Lake District is to be found at Friar's Crag on Derwentwater. Collections of Ruskiniana can also be seen at The Ruskin Gallery, 101 Norfolk Street, Sheffield, and at The Ruskin Gallery in Bembridge, Isle of Wight.

James SADLER (1753-1828)

In Christ Church Meadow on the wall in Dead Man's Walk facing Merton Field near the entrance to the Meadow from Rose Lane is a metal plaque which was affixed in 1984 to commemorate a bicentenary:

James Sadler 1753-1828

First English aeronaut who in a fire balloon .l1Iade a successful ascent frol1l near this place, 4th October 1784, to land near Voodeaton.

Sadler started life working as a pastrycook in his father's shop in High Street, Oxford, and later became technician in the University's chemical laboratory, then situated in the basement of the old Ashmolean Museum (now the Museum of the History of Science) in Broad Street. After his pioneering flight, he made six other ascents during 1784-85, and then gave up ballooning until 1810 when, at the age of 57, he took it up again, this time professionally, travelling allover the country to give demonstrations.

One of his later flights is depicted in a coloured engraving in the Museum of the History of Science (over the fireplace in the main gallery), beneath which, in a display-cabinet, is a medal struck in honour of a flight made in 1811 when he travelled 112 miles from Birmingham in eighty minutes. The Museum also has, on sale, the reproduction on a postcard of a portrait showing Sadler in his later years. The basement which housed the laboratory is still in use downstairs as part of the Museum.

Sadler died at his house in George Street on his seventy-fifth birthday and was buried in the churchyard of his parish church of St Peter-in-the-East, now the library of St Edmund Hall. His grave, marked by a headstone, is on the left of the path leading to the library entrance. The inscription reads:

Sacred to the l11el1loryof James Sadler. He died March 27th 1828, aged 75 years.

This stone was renewed by the Royal Aeronautical Society on the occasion of the centenary of the death of the above named, the first English aeronaut, and subsequently after the bicentenary in 1984 of his first flight on 4th October.

On the west wall of the library is a memorial, also placed in 1928, one of many fine memorials in St Peter's, which have been preserved in the library:

To the memory of James Sadler of this city 1753- 1828. The first English aeronaut, be made his first ascent at Oxford, October 41784.

Cecil SHARP (1859-1924)

On the wall of Number 1, Horwood Close, Headington (formerly the site of Sandfield House), is a metal plaque with the inscription:

Here on Boxing Day 1899, Cecil Sharp first heard William Kimber play the Headington Quarry Harris Dance tunes.

Cecil Sharp, then a forty-year-old schoolteacher and part-time head of a conservatory of music in Hampstead, happened to be spending the Christmas of 1899 with his wife's parents at Sandfield House; and as the result of his hearing William Kimber, he devoted his life increasingly to the collection, publication and performance of folk-song and dance. By the time of his death he had collected over five thousand folk-songs both in England and among the English settlers in the Southern Appalachian Mountains (Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and Tenessee) in the United States of America. In 1911 he founded the English Folk Dance Society which later amalgamated with the English Folk Song Society to form the present English Folk Dance and Song Society, whose headquarters in Regent's Park Road, London, are appropriately called Cecil Sharp House. The Headington Quarry Morris Dancers still perform in Horwood Close once a year, early in the evening of Whit Monday. Cecil Sharp's name also survives in Cecil Sharp Crescent, a housing development off Lime Walk, Headington.

Yillia. Kimber also has a road named after him in Headington - Kimber Crescent off Gladstone Road. He lived to be eighty-nine and was buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry. His grave (near that of C. S. Lewis) is marked with a headstone decorated with a concertina and a set of dancers' bells, and bears the inscription: William (Herry) Kimber, Father of English Harris. 1872-1961. Round the corner from the church is the Chequers public house, on whose walls can be seen photographs of bygone members of the Headington Quarry Morris Dancers.

Percy Bysshe SHELLEY ( 1792-1822 )

Off the Front Quadrangle of University College is the Shelley Memorial Room, a doIISd chamber designed in 1893 by Basil Champneys to contain the monument to the poet by the sculptor Edward Onslow Ford.

Shelley had been admitted to University College from Eton in 1810, but was sent down after only two terms 'for contumaciously refusing to answer questions and repeatedly declining to disavow a publication entitled The Necessity of Atheism'.

The monument had originally been intended for Shelley's grave in the Protestant Cemetery in RoIlS, but it was offered to the college because it was found to be too big for the grave. The college's pride at having nurtured so distinguished a poet must have overcome reservations over accepting the monuIISnt that some members must have had in view of Shelley's life-style both during and after his residence at Oxford. The memorial consists of a life-size nude figure of the drowned Shelley in white marble. recumbent on a slab of Connemara marble supported by two winged lions in bronze, in front of which is a bronze mourning figure representing the Poetic Muse. On the wall behind the monument are the words

Percy Bysshe Shelley. Born Aug 41792. Died July 81822

and some lines from one of Shelley's own poems. Kourn not for Adonais, which he might almost have written as his own epitaph.

On permanent display in a glass-topped case in the Divinity School is a collection of Shelley memorabilia belonging to the Bodleian Library. These include Shelley's watch-and-chain, a glove, a child's rattle, a guitar, an autograph poem and portraits of some of the women in his life.

Shelley Road (between Cowley Road and Cricket Road) was named after him in 1922, and Shelley Close (off Kiln Lane) in 1946.

James SMITHSON (1765-1829)

On the wall of the Old Quad of Pembroke College. just round the corner from the Porters' Lodge, is a large metal plaque with a profile portrait and an inscription:

James Smithson FRS Founder of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. Erected by the Regents of the Institution. 1896.

Smithson once an undergraduate at Pembroke. was the natural son of Hugh Smithson Percy, First Duke of Northumberland, and was known in his youth by his mother's surname of Macie. He became a distinguished chemist and mineralogist and amassed a considerable fortune which he had originally intended to bequeath for the foundation of a scientific institution in England  but in the event he changed his mind and left t100,OOO to the United States of America. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, his choice of the United States was made because of his 'republican sympathies'. but Chambers Biographical Dictionary claims that Smithson left his money to the United States 'in a fit of pique at the Royal Society's rejection of a paper by him in 1826'. Whatever the reason, Washington D.C. acquired the Smithsonian Institution, and England lost out. The University of Oxford later learnt to woo potential benefactors by bestowing honorary degrees on them, as entries for Cecil Rhodes and William Morris testify.

John Ronald Reuel TOLKElN(1892-1973)

J. R. R. Tolkien spent nearly all his adult life in Oxford, first as an undergraduate at Exeter College, later as a Fellow of Pembroke College and Professor of Anglo-Saxon �1926-45), and finally as a Fellow of Merton College and Professor of English Language and Literature (1945- 59). Between 1953 and 1968 he lived at 76 Sandfield Road, Headington, where there is a plaque. His books The Hobbit (1937) and Lord of the Rings (1955) describe a fantasy world of his own invention with its own mythology and language.

He is buried in Wolvercote Cemetery. The grave (L2, 211) is to be found in the Roman Catholic area and is marked by a slab of grey granite.

(See C. S. Lewis)

NIicholas and Dorothy WADHAM

When Nicholas Wadham from Somerset died in 1609, he left his fortune to endow a colege at Oxford. The onus of establishing the college fell on his seventy-five-year-old widow, Dorothy, who never visited Oxford. She successfully upheld her husband's Will by fighting off the claims of disappointed relatives, purchased a site in Oxford, chose an architect and builders, appointed a Warden, Fellows and scholars, and had the college opened within four years of her husband's death .

She and her husband are honoured as co-founders of Wadham College and are commemorated in stone in the Front Quad. Here, on the facade of the east range (facing visitors as they look across the quad from the main gate), are statues of King James I and of Nicholas and Dorothy. Nicholas is shown holding a model of the college. The date Anno Dom.1613, Apr 20 and the words sub auspices K. Jacobo can be discerned above a Latin inscription:

(Visitor! The house which you see here dedicated to the Kuses was planned by Nicholas Wadham Esquire of Somerset. but he, being taken by fate, left the realisation of it  to Dorothy, his wife, who unhesitatingly carried out his wish and greatly increased the benefaction with her own money. Kay our supreme Father bless the undertaking and add to this gift which is given in his honour the gift of perpetuity.)