Oxford Style

Photo descriptions:
1st row - bridge like the one in Venice, Bodleian Library, All Soul's College
2nd row - view of street from top of St.Mary's tower, sundial,Christ Church college where filming of Harry Potter took place
3rd row - Radcliffe Camera, Queen's College where we stayed, the modern physics building

On August 17^th – 20^th, we had the great fortune to go and visit Oxford, England for four days to see some long time Chicago friends and J. could collaborate with some folks at the university. My impression of Oxford after my four days there is that it’s a town dripping in tradition and Cotswold limestone buildings with spiky spires that surround luscious green grass gardens that you are not allowed to walk on for fear of being kicked out.

We were being hosted by someone at the university. So, in following the Oxford tradition, they put us up in the senior lecturer guest room at Queen’s College. Queen’s college is 700 years old but thankfully our room was of the 21^st century and quite charming overlooking a church that has been on permanent loan as a library to another college and a cemetery where the gravestones are so worn you can’t read them any longer. There was a wedding in this graveyard one afternoon. I never did figure out who exactly was loaning the church. It was a luxurious room with a bathtub you could lay down in.

Photo description: (J. on his way to the physics dept. passed by the church we see from the window of our room)

Photo descriptions:

1st row - note about Queen's college, chalk graffiti on Christ Church college about who won the
rowing competitions, Christ Church dining room set for Harry Potter and inspiration for Alice in Wonderland,

2nd Row - old graffiti scratched on the door objecting to new elected school leader, view from top of University Church St. Mary's, the buttery!

3rd Row - St. Frideswide window, local saint of Oxford, in Christ Church cathedral; our room in Queen's college; funny sculpture outside of Oxford theater.

The University Church

Churches are a significant part of Oxford history as I learned while
touring University Church, St. Mary’s. Here you can climb the tower and pier out across the Oxford, spirescape and into the grass garden of All Soul’s College. (photo college 1, first row third photo) This church is where Oxford began. Scholars adopted this place to hold their lectures and great debates over religion. The church was home to Oxford’s first library. Students and scholars lived in houses surrounding the church. A couple of centuries later it became the place to receive your diploma and university government. It dawned on me that many other great institutions started out as divinity schools like the Sorbonne, Harvard and the University of Chicago. Religious studies had a vast influence on these scholarly institutions.

The Colleges (39 in total)

After visiting I now believe I better understand the spirit of the college system used at UCSC. Though not true at UCSC, at Oxford overtime wealthy people sponsored the building of colleges to serve as scholarly centers within themselves to boost up the education of their local pastors or to leave their mark on the world. The college buildings are built with mood ring like Cotswold limestone. Depending on the mood of the weather and the light the buildings go from pale white to sunset pinks. These buildings surround a courtyard garden of grass in which in you cannot walk upon but only stare at or is it for contemplation purposes? I don’t understand a garden with only grass but I found many of them walking around Oxford.

The students would affiliate themselves with a college where there were such perks as having a porter to clean the rooms and make the beds. So why are they looking so glum in this photo?

Each college must also raise their own money to maintain itself. Hey Bill Gates why not start a new college? Each college has dorms, a library, dining hall, chapel, and a room called the buttery located between the dining hall and the kitchen.

Buttery

What is the buttery? My interest was particularly peaked b/c there is famous bakery in SC called the Buttery. Is it possible the Buttery in SC is named after the butteries I saw in Oxford? I saw butteries everywhere in the colleges. There was even a pastry and sandwich shop called the Buttery in downtown Oxford. One day at our tomato, egg and baked bean breakfast, we asked a very friendly young lady waitress about the buttery at Queen’s College. She said the buttery was once a place where students would go and get wine and beer to drink and to mark of their name at meal times. Today the room is only used by the wait staff to sit and take a break and store extra things like silverware and non-alcoholic beverages.

Other Buttery Facts to butter you up -

• Ale and wine were the water of the middle ages so I guess the students would need it.
  
• “The word buttery has nothing to do with "butter", but comes from old French "boterie" and the Latin "botaria", meaning "cask or bottle". “
• The person watching over the buttery was called the butler.
• The buttery was a central aspect of medieval castles and manor houses in England to store drinks and other household provisions and acted like a today’s pantries.
• Dictionary.com has a brief and useful definition under number 2. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/buttery

It’s still kind of vague for me if the Buttery could transition from medieval wine shop to modern day bakeries. I will have to do more research on the use of the buttery as a pantry. Any buttery scholars out there?

Meal time protocol. (photo Queen's college dining room.)

Where you are in the pecking order determines where you sit in the dining room. We were seated at the head table for breakfast. This is a table at the far end of the dining room that sits a bit raised up. This table is positioned perpendicular to the other tables which are arranged lengthwise of the room in long line. Christ Church dining hall(not shown to the left) is famed for inspiring some of the Alice in Wonderland events and was used during the filming of Harry Potter. During the school year some colleges require that robes be worn and the scholars sit on one side of the table and the students on the other side. They stand say prayers and then eat. It’s a rule that when you go to sit down you sit down next to a person and not leave any empty chairs between you and another person already seated at the table. We met a very interesting visiting scholar doing research at the Bodleian Library on sheet music of silent films.

The Library

The Bodleian library is where you can find a chalkboard that Einstein wrote upon. Next door is the Radcliffe Camera building, the gateway to the original science collection located under the streets around the square. I heard from a tourist guide that a book is checked out once every 16 years as it now holds mostly ancient manuscripts.

Oxford Time

You hear all types of bells around town on the hour and off the hour. It’s charming for a short stay but I would hate to live next door to one of these bells and I think it might be quite difficult to find a place faraway. When visiting Christ Church Cathedral Oxford the brochure reads, “Cathedral time is five minutes later than standard time.” Therefore if the choir sings at 6PM I think this means to go at 6:05 PM. I also learned that the clock tower for the Christ Church College used to ring 101 times at 9:09PM to ensure all 101 students made it back to the dorms for curfew. The college is bigger and there is no curfew any longer.

Tea Time

One of my favorite things in Oxford was going to high tea at the Grand Café and discovering that champagne is included with the tea! The tea comes in mugs that say, "First cafe to serve coffee in England." I thought this a bit ironic now that their claim to fame is high tea. One waitress was able to tell us that during the plague you had to bring your own coffee cup to the cafe but that is all she knew about the coffee and the tea history of the cafe. High tea also comes with a three tiered platter full of goodies. The bottom tier has the spicy salmon sandwiches, the middle tier has the scones, which are more like sweetened biscuits with clotted cream, and the top tier has the chocolates.

On Friday I sat and waited for J. at the new physics building and heard the receptionist answer inquiries on where people were by saying, “They must be at tea.” I heard this at least 15 times. Indeed at tea that afternoon the folks we had tea with confirmed that tea time is taken very seriously. They also alerted me that sometimes you order High Tea but it does not include the tea. Tea time often leads into pub time. You enjoy a local pint of ale which leads to one then two then three and soon enough it’s time for fish and chips.

Oxford, the town

Oxford has many other interesting things around town such as

• One of the first museums in England,
  
• Indoor covered markets where you can find Ben’s ginger and chocolate chip cookies and hear butchers pronounce the letter “t” in the word fillet,
  
• Down the street a rather disappointing castle mostly used to hold prisoners.
  

It’s a town where you can stand on any street corner and look down the street to some sort of tower be it a clock, a bell or just a spiky spire. Another fun thing is called punting which is just a flat bottomed boat you gently push along the river using a long pole against the river bottom.

The Eurostar Surprise

We traveled to Oxford via the Eurostar to London and then a double decker bus that England is so famous for. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that J. had booked us first class for our journey home to Paris. It was such a grand ending to our visit of a grand university. We had a little corner all to ourselves, a delicious organic meal with of course all the champagne I wanted. It was one of the best meals I have had in Europe! There is no better way to travel.