Christ Church Cathedral

Christ Church, or as University men call it "The House", is the first of the Renaissance colleges.

Piety was the background to all the earlier colleges. In the case of Christ Church it was ambition.

Thomas, Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop of York and Lord High Chancellor sought to establish a college which should bethe greatest centre of learning in Christendom. Following his suppression of the nearby Priory of St. Frideswide as well as of many others, he applied the proceeds to his new college the foundation stone of which was laid in 1525.

The spacious kitchen and great hall, which visitors are understandably so keen to see, were the first parts of the coll­ege to be completed, (1525-29). It may be noted that the hall's magnificent staircase of fan-tracery was built much later, in 1640, to the design of a virtually unknown London architect, named Smith.

At the time of his disgrace, Wolsey had built the East, South and part of the West sides of the great quadrangle, including the gateway as far as the octagonal tower, (which, with the dome was completed by Wren). It was nearly one hundred years before Dr. Samuel Fell, in the reign of Charles I, undertook the work of completion which however was interrupted by the re­bellion, the task being finally achieved after the Restoration by his son, Dr. John Fell,

Peckwater Quadrangle to the North was built in 1705 by Dean Aldrich.

Canterbury Quadrangle to the South East of Peckwater was constructed towards the end of the 18th. Century on the site of Canterbury Hall where Thomas More was once a student.

The Meadow Buildings were erected in 1863.

Over the Gateway facing the Quad is a statue of Queen Anne and facing the street, one of Wolsey.

The great bell hanging in Tom Tower which gives it and the quad its popular name, came from Oseney Abbey. It is seven feet in diameter and weighs seven and a half tons.

With Wolsey's downfall Cardinal College was refounded as King Henry VIII's College in Oxford.

In 1546 the newly-founded Cathedral Church of Christ was joined to the college under the title "Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxon: ex fundatione Regis Henrici Octavi".

In more recent times, perhaps its most renowned alumni have been Statesmen, George Canning, Robert Peel, Lord Dal­housie, Lord Canning, Lord Elgin, W. E. Gladstone, Lord Salis­bury, Lord Rosebery. Ruskin must be mentioned again, and in lighter vein Charles Dodgson — "Lewis Carroll" — of 'Alice in Wonderland' fame.

Gatehouse 1525/1681, Cathedral 12-14th. Cent¬ury, Library 1761.The pool in the centre of the great quad was constructed in 1670 and was originally the college reservoir.