�㽶ֱ�� history

The Staircase to Nowhere and its Greek Inscription

Christopher — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 20:37:47 +0000

The Staircase to Nowhere and its Greek Inscription

Stephen Anderson

Issue number

(2024): 21

Notes category

Deep in the bowels of the new Gradel buildings is the so-called basement hub, a circular area from which doors, corridors and stairways go off in all directions to different parts of the development. One notable feature here, added more for the sake of symmetry of design than for any other reason, is the ‘Staircase to Nowhere’, a set of seven or so steps which do no more than go up to a small semi-circular area on which some natural light is shed from a window far above.

Staircase (top), Gradel Quadrangles, �㽶ֱ��, Oxford

�㽶ֱ��, Oxford

21NCN10 (2024) Anderson on Greek Inscription.pdf605.36 KB

�㽶ֱ�� Examination Results in the Nineteenth Century: From ‘Uninspiring Indolence’ to ‘Academic Preeminence’

Christopher — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 18:15:52 +0000

�㽶ֱ�� Examination Results in the Nineteenth Century: From ‘Uninspiring Indolence’ to ‘Academic Preeminence’

Dennis A. Ahlburg

Issue number

(2024): 21

Notes category

The fellows and students of �㽶ֱ��, Oxford moved on from drinking, gaming, and brutish pleasures to academic success, or learned to balance them much better than in the early centuries of the college’s history. The 19th century opened with the college’s being an academic irrelevancy and closed with its being an academic powerhouse which it is to this day.

Joseph Nash, �㽶ֱ�� Hall (1858), watercolour on paper

�㽶ֱ��, Oxford

21NCN5 (2024) Ahlburg on Examination Results.pdf173.44 KB

Amicabilis Concordia 1444–2024

Christopher — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 16:48:12 +0000

Amicabilis Concordia 1444–2024

Michael Stansfield

Issue number

(2024): 21

Notes category

Archives

Amicabilis Concordia

�㽶ֱ�� history

King's College, Cambridge

Winchester College

Eton College

The Amicabilis Concordia, or friendship agreement, is a document renowned these days for the evensongs occasionally held in its name by four colleges dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary; that is �㽶ֱ��, Oxford, King’s College, Cambridge, Eton College, and Winchester College. The Concordia was sealed on 1 July 1444 as a quadripartite indenture.

The signed and beribboned menu for dinner after the King’s College versus �㽶ֱ�� football 1924 [detail]
�㽶ֱ�� Archives, Oxford, NCA JCR/R/Mallett/4b

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

21NCN1 (2024) Stansfield on Amicabilis Concordia.pdf659.63 KB

�㽶ֱ�� MCR: The 60th Anniversary

Christopher — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 01:27:28 +0000

�㽶ֱ�� MCR: The 60th Anniversary

Michael Stansfield

Issue number

(2023): 20

Notes category

On Tuesday, 7 March 2023, �㽶ֱ��’s Middle Common Room (MCR) celebrated the 60th anniversary of its establishment with an exhibition of significant items from the archives in the Conduit Room, a reception in the Founder’s Library, the distribution of appropriate stash (including some rather natty appropriately branded scarves), speeches from the Warden and the President Emily Jin, and dinner in Hall. The anniversary was worth celebrating because, as in so many areas, �㽶ֱ�� had rather led the way in recognising and providing for what is now a major and vital part of its community whose genesis is worth exploring.

Plan of the site between Longwall Street and the city wall that became the Sacher Building [detail]
�㽶ֱ�� Archives, Oxford, NCA BUR/BCF/205

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

20NCN9 (2023) Stansfield on MCR.pdf344.56 KB

The Acquisition of Alton Barnes as a �㽶ֱ�� Estate in 1385

Christopher — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 19:52:41 +0000

The Acquisition of Alton Barnes as a �㽶ֱ�� Estate in 1385

Michael Stansfield

Issue number

(2023): 20

Notes category

The manors of Alton Barnes with Shaw and Alton Priors, now the civil parish of Alton, are in the Vale of Pewsey on the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire. Alton Priors only came into �㽶ֱ��’s purview relatively recently, in 1912. Alton Barnes with Shaw, on the other hand, has had a much longer association with the college, being one of the first estates to be provided by the Founder for his new foundation in Oxford when it became part of the college’s endowment in 1385. As with many of the college’s estates, the �㽶ֱ�� archive is rich with documents recording both the process of it becoming part of that endowment, and also something of the back story of its existence before then.

The earl of Salisbury’s counterseal, used by William Montagu (1328–1397), 2nd earl of Salisbury
�㽶ֱ�� Archives, Oxford, NCA 10039 [detail]

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

20NCN3 (2023) Stansfield on Alton Barnes.pdf405.67 KB

‘Ancient virtue and manly spirits’: The �㽶ֱ�� Men Who Fell in the Second Boer War

Christopher — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 14:36:46 +0000

‘Ancient virtue and manly spirits’: The �㽶ֱ�� Men Who Fell in the Second Boer War

Jason Morgan

Issue number

(2023): 19

Notes category

Boer War

Second Boer War

�㽶ֱ�� history

William Brian Lancelot Alt

Percy Frederick Brassey

Douglas Hamilton McLean

Douglas Marriott

George Ralston Peddie Waddell

George Edward Stevenson Salt

Richard Bassett Wilson

Located on the south wall of the cloisters of �㽶ֱ��, Oxford is a bronze commemorative plaque ‘sacred to the memory of seven former members of this house’. Who were these seven men, who fell during the fighting in the Second Boer War?

�㽶ֱ�� Archives, Oxford, NCA JCR/Q1/1

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

19NCN8 (2023) Morgan on the Second Boer War.pdf1.36 MB

Some Benefactors and their Heraldry

Christopher — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 14:21:40 +0000

Some Benefactors and their Heraldry

Patric Dickinson

Issue number

(2023): 19

Notes category

It is a commonplace that many of the coats of arms on display in Oxford colleges commemorate past benefactors. �㽶ֱ�� is no exception, and in fact is particularly rich in heraldry that celebrates those who have contributed to its material wellbeing. This has been the case throughout its history, but the purpose of this Note is to take a look at some of the armorial additions that have been made to its fabric since the mid-19th century.

�㽶ֱ�� Archives, Oxford, NCA 2429

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

19NCN7 (2023) Dickinson on Benefactors and Heraldry.pdf1.62 MB

A Library about �㽶ֱ��: Noteworthy Acquisitions in 2022

Christopher — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 23:59:07 +0000

A Library about �㽶ֱ��: Noteworthy Acquisitions in 2022

Christopher Skelton-Foord

Issue number

(2022): 18

Notes category

Library Antiquarian

Archives

Colleges of St Mary Winton Collection

Winchester College

�㽶ֱ�� history

George Isaac Huntingford

James Ian Arbuthnot Frazer

Sir Jonathan Trelawny, third baronet

Lord Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montagu, third Baron Montagu of Beaulieu

Theodore Wratislaw

Fernando Leal Audirac

Alice Oswald

Ensuring through collection building that New College Library is a library about as well as for college is one of the librarian’s many rewarding responsibilities. As we seek to enrich our collections and to preserve our institutional history, 2022 has seen important purchases and donations: of books written by alumni past, of items associated with our college and our partner Wykehamist foundation Winchester College, as well as of books penned by celebrated fiction writers and poets of �㽶ֱ�� presently writing.

Fernando Leal Audirac, The End of the Known World (Milan, 2022)
New College Library, Oxford, NC/SKE Oversize

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

18NCN12 (2022) Skelton-Foord on Acquisitions in 2022.pdf962.7 KB

�㽶ֱ�� School Archive

Christopher — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 23:41:13 +0000

�㽶ֱ�� School Archive

Michael Stansfield

Issue number

(2022): 18

Notes category

�㽶ֱ�� School

Archives

�㽶ֱ�� history

For much of the history of �㽶ֱ�� School, dating back to the foundation of �㽶ֱ�� itself in 1379, recourse has to be made to the main archive of �㽶ֱ��. What has now been taken into the �㽶ֱ�� Archive to join the rest of the college’s collection, as of October 2022, is material that largely reflects and recounts the development of the school in the last century or so of its existence.

�㽶ֱ�� Archives, Oxford, NCA NCS/FB3/2

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

18NCN11 (2022) Stansfield on �㽶ֱ�� School Archive.pdf616.97 KB

The German War Memorial in �㽶ֱ�� Chapel

Christopher — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 20:31:10 +0000

The German War Memorial in �㽶ֱ�� Chapel

Elliot Jordan

Issue number

(2022): 17

Notes category

First World War

�㽶ֱ�� Chapel, Oxford

�㽶ֱ�� history

Prince Wolrad-Friedrich zu Waldeck-Pyrmont

Freiherr Wilhelm von Sell

Erwin Beit von Speyer

Members of �㽶ֱ�� will have seen and been struck by one of the smaller, but most arresting, fixtures in the chapel: the memorial to three German undergraduates who died in the First World War. Beyond the usual power of any war memorial, especially one so simply and beautifully designed, this tablet is especially evocative in its willingness to commemorate men on the opposite side of such an acrimonious pan-European conflict.

Monument to the �㽶ֱ�� German War Dead, in the Ante-Chapel of �㽶ֱ��, Oxford

�㽶ֱ��, Oxford

17NCN8 (2022) Jordan on the German War Memorial.pdf898.85 KB