2009 September » robertmealing.com

This past weekend was Oxford Open Doors, the annual weekend event where many of the “not open to the public” buildings in Oxford are open to the public! It’s a chance to get to see inside many of the colleges; to visit gardens, churches and museums; and to take walking tours through interesting areas of the city.

We wanted to visit places this year that we hadn’t visited last year, so we started off with a visit to one of the youngest colleges, Nuffield College:

The grounds were pleasant, lots of roses, and modern sculpture in the quads.

Next we went the Church of St. Michael at the North Gate, a wonderful old with great stained glass windows. It was once attached to the prison where the “Oxford Martyrs” were held before being taken out to the street and burned at the stake for not recanting their Protestant beliefs during the reign of Mary Tudor, who tried to return the country to Roman Catholicism.

Inside there is a coat of arms for Oxford that I find very, very interesting:

I’ve heard a few different versions of who the three women at the top are. Some say that it is the Patron Saint of Oxford, St. Frideswide, and her “two helpers”. Others say it is St. Frideswide, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret. Most people say they just don’t know. I personally wonder if it is related to the “Matrones“.

We climbed to the top of the Saxon tower attached to the building, which is the oldest building in Oxford, and had a look at the view:

Then we went to All Souls College, which is a college only for graduate students. It’s quite difficult to get onto the grounds, so I was excited to get to go inside, and especially to see the chapel. The wall behind the altar was amazing:

Most of the statues are replacements, the originals having been destroyed by Puritans (I have come to really dislike them, the damage they wrought!!). In you look closely, you can still see some of the old original paint in the nooks. In front of this are three painted panels, including one of Christ in the Harrowing of Hell, where Christ descends into Hell before his resurrection, and releases the Old Testament figures, (notice Adam and Eve?).

In the Antechapel, there were these amazing paintings on wood boards, they remind me of William Blake:

We then visited Garrett’s old college, Jesus College, which was founded by Queen Elizabeth:

Painting of Elizabeth in the dining hall:

Next we went to the gardens at Exeter College, and looked out on the view above the square at the Radcliffe Camera:

We walked over to the Holywell Cemetery, which was established in the 1800s and seemed to have an emphasis on celtic-oriented graves.

There were tours of the graves, and there was a lovely lady playing a harp under a tree. When I took this photo, I thought it was particularly funny to also see the infant playing on the grave in the background:

Our next stop was Harris Manchester College, which is the college I hope to attend if I get into the Master’s program when I apply at the end of next year. Its chapel is famous for the stained glass windows by Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris:

We ended our tour with a visit to the Church of St Barnabas, a church that was built in the “Anglo-Catholic” tradition (which I wrote about in my last essay for class last term). It’s built in a style that reminds me of a cross between Byzantium and Ravenna. It is spectacular:

One of a series of mosaics along one side of the church: