Well, we’re here at the side door to New College. I’ll hold the door open for you and we’ll go in.
That’s the way ahead, let’s walk to the end of the small passage and look out.
We’ll be taking the small door over on the far side of the courtyard on the left. No. Not the door directly facing us. Our door is facing at 90 degrees to us, and is much smaller. We can hardly make it out from here. We’ll move over to that side of the courtyard and turn left.
That’s where we’re going. It’s quite small. No really, it’s a small door:
Let’s turn around for a moment and enjoy the statues on this side of the side entrance
Jennie wasn’t going to take a photo of those until she realised that the one on the right was on his knees. Her words at that point? “A kneeling bishop? You can’t have a statue suggesting bishops kneel…” Very droll. But it did mean we got a photo taken. Let’s turn back around and walk into the small doorway and see what’s next.
Breathtaking sight. Often a bit lost on me as I was rushing to the lecture and couldn’t stop to take in this little alcove along the way. But breathtaking for all that.
We’ve just passed through the other alcove and are looking at the next, much smaller courtyard. This time we can see the doorway we're going to walk through, even though, again, it is at 90 degrees to us.
That’s the building where my lecture room was, over on the right hand side, on the ground floor. Most of it is given over either to faculty studies or residences for members of the College. People live there.
That’s the path retraced. Let’s walk over there and have a quick look around before we leave New College.
That’s the building we have just come from. Like the one where my lecture room is, it is primarily a place where people live. I really can’t imagine living in a place like this. You can see where J.K Rowling got the idea for Hogswarts (and Pratchett his Unseen University).
And there’s the view just a bit to the left of where we’ve come from. Some turreted walls begin that continue for a while. Why a College needs fortifications, I’ll never know. Perhaps Old College really didn’t like this upstart newfangled place. Or maybe they took their academic disagreements way too seriously back then. After all, the pen is mightier than the sword. (And those fortifications are mightier still…) MDB
3 comments:
I think the battlements are at least in part to protect the students from the unruly townsfolk. There were some seriously bloody riots in the Middle Ages in Oxford, town vs gown, that sort of thing.
New College is of course New by dint of being about the third college built. It is just newer than Merton.
Hey badders, or badderses.
I really have no idea why the words Dungeons and Dragons popped unbidden into my mind.
You mentioned Pratchett and Rowling ... what of Pullman? Is it Lyra's Oxford?
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