Exeter College Fellows Gardens

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The foundations of the early established Colleges were based very largely on the differing sympathies, customs, characters and even the language of differing localities. The Colleges preceding Exeter had been established for men from the Northern Count­ies. Walter de Stapledon, a Devonian, had studied at Oxford and when Bishop of Exeter he established in 1314 Stapledon Hall, as Exeter was first called, for scholars, only twelve at first, resident or born in Devon or Cornwall.

Exeter has the reputation of having always been belligerent based possibly on its opposition to orthodoxy as such, and may be said to have made some contribution to the dubbing of Oxford as the home of lost causes.

Visitors should experience one of Oxford's most pleasant vistas : that of the Fellows' Garden as seen from the narrow passage at the south-east corner of the main quad. The drawing is from this garden and shows the Divinity School and Bodleian Library.

Again visitors may like to be reminded of the pleasure in store in the beautiful tapestry on the chapel wall near the altar: the work conjointly, of two of the college's mid-nineteenth cent­ury alumni Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris.

Of its pre-Reformation buildings, only a fragment remains : the Tower of the old gateway on the north, called Palmer's Tower (1432).

Perhaps the most notable of the college's buildings is its hall, built by Sir John Acland in 1618.

The dates of some of the college's buildings: Hall 1618, Gate­house 1701, redesigned 1833, Library 1778, Chapel 1860.

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