My local chapel is at Worcester College, close by to where Beaumont Palace once stood and where two Kings of England were born. It doesn’t look much from the outside. But once through the doors, you cannot fail to be moved by the magnificence of it all, every nook and cranny dripping with elaborate decoration. At once you are hit by a riot of colour, blues, greens, reds, purples, and gold. Lots of gold.
I’d tagged along with photographer John Milnes, who has been following the local sculptor, Alex Wenham in the two year process it has taken to create from commission to completion. Who will it represent? Why was it ordered? And how was the finished piece achieved? Here in a series of pictures and John’s photographs, we tell the story.
I’ve often spotted it on my walk along the towpath from Folly Bridge to Iffley. Across on the east bank of the Isis, nestled into the Kidney Stream, an old cut leading to the Cherwell from the Thames just before you reach Donnington Bridge. A fanciful floating pavilion rising from the water, its curved prow reminiscent of classical longboats, flagpole erect, pilasters framing the door to a whimsical white wooden cabin with hobbit like oval windows. There’s an external staircase leading to a raised rooftop garden overhung with willow, a tall chimney in the middle from which on colder days white plumes of smoke announce that there are occupants below. It all looks very romantic.
I was gratified to hear from an Oxford Sausage reader of my post on the swift tower in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, asking if was I aware of the heraldic version of the swift, the martlet. This is a mythical bird drawn in such a way that rather than have legs, the bird has tufts of feathers.
Every so often while out walking I will come across something or somebody that takes me by surprise. Stops me in my tracks. And so it is on my regular route to the University Parks when I encounter Dan Arnold and Trigger.
Antonia Hockton has been coming to New College in Oxford twice a year for the past 26 years. She arrives as the students leave, for the long vacation. For this…
The forecast was rain, so I took an umbrella to Green Templeton College for the tour I had booked through Oxford’s Civic Society. It’s not a famous college. For a…
I am standing at the scene of a crime. Not far from The Oxford Sausage headquarters in front of the side entrance to The Ashmolean Museum on St Giles. It…
When I was researching Oxford tokens for a previous ‘Sausage’ post, I came across a coin that had been struck in the mid 17th century with the sign of a…
I find it hard to understand why the architecture of Keble College has aroused such animosity. I pass it regularly on my route to the University Parks, and I love…