July 10 – Oxford, England. It's HoHo day again. I'm not sure what it is but I love riding in these things. It's another beautiful, sunny, cool day and it's great just to be on the open deck circling this beautiful city.
I have to admit that there are so many colleges here that whizzing by them on a bus leads to some confusion about where they actually are. But I had a great solution for that and it involves my favorite policeman Inspector Morse. I bought the book, The Oxford of Inspector Morse and Lewis. In it they have all the episodes of both series with the shooting locations listed and a great map of the town with only the colleges labeled. Well, the colleges, major landmarks and Morse's pubs. Almost all the old buildings and some of the new are built using the same golden limestone. It's very reminiscent of the stone required to be used in any building in Old Jerusalem and late in the day it's a very pretty golden color.
Here's the list of the colleges of Oxford University by date of founding. (G) = Graduate Only, (W) = Founded as a women's school. 1224 Greyfriars Franciscans, 1226 Blackfriar's Dominicans, 1249 University College, 1263 Balliol, 1264 Merton, 1277 Saint Benets Hall Benedictines, 1314 Exeter, 1324 Oriel, 1341 The Queen's, 1379 New College, 1427 Lincoln, 1438 All Souls, 1458 Magdalen (pronounced Maudlen), 1509 Brasnose, 1517 Corpus Christi, 1525 Christ Church, 1554 Trinity, 1555 Saint John's, 1571 Jesus, 1610 Wadham, 1624 Pembroke, 1714 Worcester, 1740 Hertford , 1786 Harris Manchester, 1862 Linacre (G), 1874 Keble, 1877 Wycliffe Hall, 1878 Lady Margaret Hall (W), 1879 Saint Anne's (W), 1879 Somerville (W), 1886 Mansfield, 1886 Saint Hugh's (W), 1893 Saint Hilda's (W), 1896 Campion Hall, 1927 Regent's Park, 1928 Saint Peter's, 1937 Nuffield, 1953 Saint Anthony's (G), 1957 Saint Edmund Hall, 1962 Saint Catherine's, 1965 Saint Cross (G), 1965 Wolfson (G), 1977 Green College/Radcliffe Observatory, 1984 Templeton, 1990 Kellogg.
As you can see the late 1800s was a big time for women's colleges. Although the women fought to keep them that way, the hypocrisy of making men's colleges go co-ed while keeping their schools women only was apparently lost on their somewhat limited and biased 'Woman's Lib' brains, they are now also all co-ed.
The first lap of the HoHo bus gave me some new ideas for things to see. I knew I wanted to see Balliol, Trinity and Exeter colleges because of the connection to the real John Wycliffe and the fictional Inspector Morse. Several iconic buildings were also on the list, Radcliffe Camera, the Sheldonian Theater, the Bridge of Sighs, Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum, the Martyr's Memorial, White Horse Pub, Eagle and Child Pub and the Randolph Hotel. The lap on the bus added, Alice's Shop, Jesus College, Carfax Tower, William Morris' original workshop (He called it Morris' Garage which was eventually shortened to MG. I owned an MG-B roadster in 1966) and Saint Mary the Virgin Church.
Alice's Shop is The Old Sheep Shop in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. In reality it's the place where Alice Liddell went with Carroll to buy candy. The Alice in Wonderland is actually stories Carroll, a Don at Oxford College, made up to entertain Alice when she was visiting him. Alice and her sister were the daughters of another Oxford Don.
I want to visit Jesus College based on the name alone. It's an old college but I've never heard it mentioned anywhere. T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) is a graduate. They have a great coat-of-arms, three golden antlered, white stags on a shield of green but I have no idea how to interpret the symbolism. The main gate displays the three white feathers with crown that symbolizes the approval of the Prince of Wales but I don't know which one awarded it to them. Ah, another research project.
I want to visit Carfax Tower just because I want to get a better look at it. The tower is all that remains of a church that was demolished to provide better street access to that part of the city. It stands on what was the central crossroads of the city in Saxon times. I want to see the William Morris Garage because I owned a MG. It was the most unreliable car I ever owned but was it a kick to drive.
And I want to visit Saint Mary the Virgin because the 151 foot tower provides the best views around the city. We actually made it to all these places before leaving Oxford but I'd like to start with our day after leaving the bus.
We hopped off the bus at the stop for Christ Church College and went to visit Alice's Shop. It was closed with a note in the window saying that the till was broken and therefore they were closed. What?? Can't make change in a cigar box and give written sales slips? I know you'll have to do extra work to make the inventory come out right but that's better than no sales on a busy day and there are loads of people in Oxford. One lady told me it's the height of the tourist season right now. There are large groups of teenagers visiting schools and making applications.
So we went back across the street to go into Christ Church College. There's a large meadow/garden beside the school appropriately called Christ Church Meadow. It's a pretty place and on a very nice day a good place to walk. We entered the school through the main gate which leads to a small quad. I recognized the short oddly designed stairs leading to the Hall right away. It's used in the Harry Potter films and the school's dining hall is Hogwarts dining hall. Welcome to Hogwarts, Mr. Potter.
The school's church is interesting. It has some great stained glass. The Jonah Window shows Jonah sitting under his camphor bush as the sun is getting ready to dry it out leaving him with no shade. Below him is the city of Nineveh where he does not want to preach as he wants God to destroy the town and the people because they have treated the Israelites so badly. It's very attractive. The Becket Window is unique. During the Reformation Becket was killed by the Protestant army. The lower part of this window was smashed to obliterate him from the church. What they didn't notice was that he was also in a small pane in the upper part of the window. It was spared because it was small and the troops didn't identify it as Thomas Becket. The medieval stained glass images of Becket are extremely rare as almost all of them were destroyed during the reign of Henry VIII. The lower panels were replaced much later and are large, full body images of Samuel the Prophet, David the King of Israel, John the Evangelist and Timothy the Preacher. My Latin is good enough to read these simple phrases. Each has a small scene from his life below his image. It's very easy to tell that the panels at the top are much older than the bottom as the style and techniques are so different.
We exited the church through the cloisters and into Tom Quad. This part of Christ Church College is often used in Morse episodes and small wonder it's a great place. The wall and the south tower are impressive.
We left Christ Church by a different gate than we entered and after weaving around in the hall, cloisters, church and quad I wasn't sure exactly which side we were on. I knew it wasn't the west because that's where we entered. It was the east side because after a few turns on narrow streets we came upon The Bear Pub, a place used in the Morse series. It was part of a carriage inn in the days of coaches but today it's just a pub.
We were hungry a pub on High Street and had lunch. Diana had a burger, and what a burger it was. The English have come a long way in the area of beef and especially in the area of sandwiches/burgers. More and more places are making their own patties by hand and using top quality ground beef. The results have been excellent.
We decided to walk back to the hotel from here using some of the narrow streets of the old city. That way we'd get to see some of the oldest of the colleges on the way. We had already seen Oriel College just before we encountered The Bear. Brasenos College was on the High Street right across from where we ate. We turned down Turl Street and passed Lincoln College and then Jesus, and Exeter Colleges right across the street from each other, and it's a narrow street. This brought us to Broad Street where we again walked past Trinity and Balliol Colleges. We turned right on Broad Street and stopped at the White Horse Pub, one of Morse's haunts. It's in a half-timbered building from the 1700 and very attractive. We crossed the street to the Old Bodleian Library and the Sheldonian Theater both Morse settings.
From there it was back to the Martyrs' Memorial next to our hotel. The memorial appears in two episodes of Morse but more significantly it commemorates the killing of the Oxford Martyrs, Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer around the corner on Broad Street. There's a cross embedded in the street at the spot where they were burnt at the stake. It's a great gothic structure and would serve perfectly as the spire of a gothic church. In fact earlier, around the 1970s, some tour guides told foreign tourists that it was the spire of an underground church and to see the church they had to go down the stairs on both sides and behind the monument. Actually the stairs are to underground toilets so if they could read English they wouldn't be tricked, hence the selection of only foreign, preferable oriental tourists. The monument has a statue of each of the men as well as some interesting coats-of-arms around the spire.
From the memorial we walked up Saint Giles Street past Blackfriar's and Saint Cross Colleges to The Eagle and Child. This pub has the trifecta of relativity, it appears in at least two episodes of Morse but more importantly if was frequented by both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. In fact Lewis and Tolkien would meet here to read each other's current writings and exchange ideas for improvement or options for presentation. It's amazing that these two literary giants would be in the same place at the same time to share with each other. This was too good to pass up so Diana and I went into the place and I had a glass of local ale in celebration of the three of them, especially Lewis. His writing about faith and Christianity are so wonderfully simple and at the same time deep that I think the 20th Century would have been a very different time without his influence. Certainly would have been different for me. His book Mere Christianity should be required reading for anyone who seeks to know God or have a relationship with Him. It strips away all the pretentious religiosity and gets down to the very basics of faith. But I believe John Thaw, the actor who played Morse, would have would have smiled. Or at least smiled as much as he was capable of smiling.
From there it was back to the hotel for dinner and some rest.
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