The miraculous preservation of Oxford’s ‘Painted Room’
Just over a week ago, on April 23rd to be exact, I joined a jolly parade of University and City dignitaries robed in a fine collection of scarlet, fur and velvet…
-
-
Ruskin’s Road.
The undergraduates had been intending to spend the day playing cricket, tennis or on the river rowing. But such was Ruskin’s power of persuasion that he convinced them to not only attend his lecture instead, (he was one of those rare academics who could fill a lecture theatre at 9 a.m.) but to sign up for a project that he believed would put their physical prowess to more purposeful use. Building a road.
-
Tambours, Grilles and Unicorns
This was ‘real tennis’, played with a net that sags in the middle, on a funky inside court to a complicated but intriguing set of rules more akin to a game of ‘quidditch’ than that played on the lawns of Wimbledon. And although today I am heading to the one surviving court in the city, it seems the game is still alive and kicking.
-
We’re going on a head hunt
They are hidden all over Oxford and beyond. Outside, amongst the trees of parks and gardens, positioned in courtyards and parking lots. Huge ancient, crowned heads, features blackened with time, hair interlaced with lichen, lips softened by moss, some so weathered it is hard to see there ever was a face shaped out of the blocks of stone.
-
The story of Ralph Sheldon and his Oxfordshire tapestry map
I am staring at a vast map on the wall of the cavernous Blackwell Hall in the Weston Library, a stone’s throw from the centre of Oxford. How I could have missed this huge hanging in the hundreds of times I have walked in this space I have no idea. But today as if by some magic here I am, standing in front of it, taking it all in.
Transfixed.
-
John Towle and his paper house
It’s the tale of John Towle, the Victorian mill owner turned architect who created this unconventional dwelling – a house of cards I suppose one might say, for it is constructed almost entirely from paper. Not the ‘huff and puff and blow your house down’ kind of paper production of ‘The Three Little Pigs’. But a residence that stood strong and upright from when it went up in 1844 until it was finally demolished in 1996. That’s an amazing lifespan for any building. Never mind one made of paper.
-
Oxford, a city of doors
Oxford is a city of doors. Big doors, tiny doors, doors within doors. There are grand fortified gateways to colleges built to keep the townsfolk out, and plain doors with…
-
Trevor Joseph and Slade Camp
Trevor Joseph was three when he moved with his mother to Fourth Avenue, Slade Park, Headington. 64 years later and we are trying to find the location where his house…
-
Campion Hall’s black room
A couple of weeks ago I was delighted to be invited into Campion Hall. They’d recently given a fresh lick of paint to their old senior common room, what in…
-
Up the tower, down the tower and for a short while locked in the tower.
I’m attempting to climb all the towers in Oxford. The body being willing. And so, as the festival of Michaelmas approaches (29 September, traditionally one of the four quarter days…
