House and Garden UK
An Oxford college is an intense capsule of an environment, a living and working organism that seems to be possessed of its own volition and power. Which makes it a paradox that many of them outwardly look so similar – at least from the outside. Even native Oxonians might get muddled around Turl Street, where Exeter, Jesus, Lincoln and Brasenose sit cheek by jowl, each realised in the same honeyed Cotswold stone and each constructed in the approved Oxford Gothic manner. It is only when one penetrates the entrance lodge and starts to wander the quadrangles that a real sense of what the place is about can be appreciated. The quadrangles are by no means uniform in style and tone, and the huge variety of gardens to be discovered in the college’s outdoor areas includes the ‘private’ fellows’ gardens (usually open to the public nowadays) or in some cases the groves, walks, lakes, deer parks and meadows which open up once the visitor has breached the forbidding perimeter walls. For college character also has something to do with the physical fabric of the place, which is the matter of this book. If one assumes that a landscape or garden can affect the mind, then the layout of a college – the trinity of hall, chapel and library, plus of course the atmosphere of its quadrangles and gardens – will help to shape its overall feel, its identity.
Early maps of Oxford show that the city was filled with green space. Substantial gardens persisted in the very centre of Oxford right up until the early 19th century. (One 18th-century engraving of the area around the new Radcliffe Square shows what looks to be a small cornfield almost in the shadow of the Radcliffe Camera.) In a number of cases there was evidently a productive garden attached to a medieval academical hall.
Most colleges consist of one, two or three quadrangles, the front quadrangle often the oldest and slightly smaller. The transition from quad to quad is one of the greatest joys of Oxford’s college gardens for visitors, because one never knows what is coming next; it could just as easily be a tiny medieval courtyard or a spreading lawn overlooked by a splendid Palladian range. The semi-darkness of the passageways which link the quads lends an element of suspense, while the movement from gloom into light only emphasises the sense of surprise (and therefore delight). The experience of movement through the college, its own particular rhythm, is key to our understanding of its character.
This extract is taken from 'Oxford College Gardens' by Tim Richardson, photographs by Andrew Lawson, (White Lion Publishing).
Images: Andrew Lawson
