Photograph, formatting, and text by George P. Landow. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
The New Quad, Brasenose College, Oxford. Architect: Thomas Graham Jackson (1835-1924). staircases X and XI (1881-83); staircases IX (1886-87). In this photograph, the chapel is largely out of the picture at left, and the large doorway in the distance leads to the High Street. [Detail of cupola and weather vane] Click on images twice to enlarge them.
Jackson's distinctive style was “an eclectic compound of Elizabethan and Jacobean, flexible, secular, and picturesque . . . [that] represented a calculated escape from the rigidities of collegiate Gothic.” As J. Mordaunt Crook points out, his style was “exactly right for Brasenose. In the sixteenth century its buildings had been Gothic Survival; in the seventeenth century a mixture of Gothic Revival and Renaissance. Now they were to be all three simultaneously: Survival, Revival, and Renaissance” (290-91).
Left: Looking past the chapel from the Deer Garden into the New Quad. Right: The view from the High Street end toward the part of the college that contains the Hall.
Details of stonework and windows.
“Jackson's new buildings were built to last. The interior walling was of friable Headington stone; but the facings were of Gibraltar rag, with Clipsham dressings for string courses, sills, and mullions, plus hard Doulting stone for the rest of the surface work. This was Brasenose, after all: each staircase was designed to withstand heavy treatment. The landings were of flagstones from Castlehill near Thurso. The stairs themselves were composed of massive slabs from the Isle of Portland” (291).
Other images of Brasenose College, Oxford
- Exterior viewed from Radcliffe Square
- Exterior of the college viewed from the High
- The Old Quad
- Deer Park
- The Chapel
- The Hall
Bibliography
Crook, Joe Mordaunt. Brasenose: The Biography of an Oxford College. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. [review by George P. Landow]
Last modified 20 August 2012