(s of the
University Of Oxford in
England , with an estimated
Financial Endowment of £175m (
2003 ), as well as the
Cathedral church of the
Diocese Of Oxford .
Traditionally it has been seen as the most aristocratic college. It has produced thirteen
British Prime Ministers (the most recent being Sir
Alec Douglas-Home in
1963 –
1964 ), which is more than any other Oxford or Cambridge college (and two short of the total number for Cambridge University, at fifteen). However today the proportion of undergraduates from maintained and independent schools is roughly equal, which is typical of most Oxford colleges.
The college is the setting for parts of
Evelyn Waugh 's ''
Brideshead Revisited '', as well as
Lewis Carroll 's ''
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland ''. More recently it has been used in the filming of the movies of
J. K. Rowling 's ''
Harry Potter '' series. Distinctive features of the college's architecture have been used as models by a number of other academic institutions, including the
National University Of Ireland, Galway (which reproduces
Tom Quad ), and
Hutchinson Hall at the
University Of Chicago (reproducing the college dining hall). The city of
Christchurch ,
New Zealand is also named after it.
Christ Church is the only college in England which is also a cathedral (one of the smallest in England), the seat (
Cathedra ) of the Bishop of
Oxford . Its corporate title is , and the
Visitor of the House is the reigning
British Sovereign . The cathedral has a famous men and boys' choir, and is one of the main choral foundations in Oxford. The Governing Body of Christ Church consists of the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral, together with about sixty "Students", who until the 19th century had no governing powers, but are now equivalent to
Fellow s in other colleges. There is a Senior and a Junior
Censor (formally titled the ''Censor Moralis Philosphiæ'' and the ''Censor Naturalis Philosophiæ'') who are responsible for undergraduate discipline. A ''Censor Theologiæ'' is also appointed to act as the Dean's deputy.
As well as rooms for accommodation, the buildings of Christ Church include the cathedral (which also acts as the college chapel), a great hall, two libraries, two bars, and
Common Room s for dons, graduates and undergraduates. There are also gardens and a neighbouring sportsground and boat-house.
Accommodation is provided for all undergraduates, and for some graduates, although some accommodation is off-site. Accommodation is generally spacious with most rooms equipped with sinks and fridges. Many undergraduate rooms comprise 'sets' of bedrooms and living areas. Members are generally expected to dine in hall, where there are two sittings every evening, one informal and one formal (where jackets, ties and gowns are worn and
Latin grace is read). The
Buttery next to the Hall serves drinks around dinner time. There is also a college bar (known as the Undercroft), as well as a
Junior Common Room (JCR) and a Graduate Common Room (GCR).
There is a college lending library which supplements the university libraries (many of which are non-lending). Law students have the additional facility of the college law library, which has received large financial supplements from Christ Church law graduates. Most undergraduate tutorials are carried out in the college, though for some specialist papers undergraduates may be sent to tutors in other colleges.
Croquet is played in the Master's Garden in the summer. The sportsground is mainly used for
Cricket ,
Tennis ,
Rugby and
Soccer .
Rowing and
Punting is carried out by the boat-house across
Christ Church Meadow . The college owns its own punts which may be borrowed by students or dons.
The college
Beagle pack, which was one of several in Oxford, is no longer connected with the college or the university, but continues to be staffed and followed by undergraduates from across Oxford.
In June 2005, for the first time in 15 years, Christ Church held a white-tie
Commemoration Ball .
In
1525 , at the height of his power,
Thomas Cardinal Wolsey ,
Lord Chancellor of England and
Archbishop Of York , suppressed the Abbey of St
Frideswide in Oxford and founded on its lands, using funds from the dissolution of
Wallingford Priory . He planned the establishment on a magnificent scale, but fell from grace in
1529 , before the college was completed.
In
1531 the college was itself suppressed, and refounded in
1532 as by
Henry VIII , to whom Wolsey's property had escheated. Then in
1546 the King, who had broken from the
Church Of Rome and acquired great wealth through the dissolution of the monasteries in England, refounded the college as '''Christ Church''' as part of the re-organisation of the
Church Of England and made it the cathedral of the recently created diocese of Oxford.
Christ Church's
Sister College in the
University Of Cambridge is
Trinity College, Cambridge , founded the same year by Henry VIII. Since the time of
Queen Elizabeth I the college has also been associated with
Westminster School , which continues to supply a large proportion of the scholars of the college.
Major additions have been made to the buildings through the centuries, and
Wolsey's Great Quadrangle was crowned with the famous gate-tower designed by Sir ) every night for the 101 original scholars of the college. In former times this signalled the close of all the college gates throughout Oxford.
King Charles I made the Deanery his palace and held his Parliament in the Great Hall during the
English Civil War .
Christ Church has a number of architecturally important buildings. These include:
The college arms, adopted (as with those of most Oxford colleges) apparently without authority, are those of Cardinal Wolsey, and are blazoned: Sable, on a cross argent engrailed, a lion passant gules between four leopards' faces azure; on a chief or a rose gules barbed vert and seeded or between two Cornish choughs proper. The arms are depicted beneath a red cardinal's hat with fifteen tassels on either side, and sometimes in front of two crossed croziers.
There are also arms in use by the cathedral, which were confirmed in a visitation of
1574 . They are emblazoned: Between quarterly, 1st & 4th, France modern (azure three fleurs-de-lys or), 2nd & 3rd, England (gules in pale three lions passant guardant or) on a cross argent an open Bible with seven seals proper inscribed with the words "In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum" imperially crowned or.
Before formal Hall each evening, the following Latin grace is recited by a scholar of the House:
''Nōs miserī hominēs et egēnī, prō cibīs quōs nōbis ad corporis subsidium benignē es largītus, tibi, Deus omnipotēns, Pater cælestis, grātiās reverenter agimus; simul obsecrantēs, ut iīs sobriē, modestē atque grātē ūtāmur. ''
''Per Iēsum Christum Dominum nostrum.''
The remaining words of the full grace replace ''Per Iēsum Christum, etc.'' on special occasions:
''Īnsuper petimus, ut cibum angelōrum, vērum panem cælestem, verbum Deī æternem, Dominum nostrum Iēsum Christum, nōbis impertiāris; utque illō mēns nostra pascātur et per carnem et sanguinem eius fovēāmur, alāmur, et corrōborēmur.''
There is also a similarly long formal grace intended for use after meals, but this is rarely heard. Instead, when High Table rises, by which time the Hall is largely empty, the senior don simply says ''Benedictō benedīcātur''.
- Jonathan Aitken
- William Pitt Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst
- Henry William Paget, 1st Marquess Of Anglesey
- George Eden, 1st Earl Of Auckland
- W. H. Auden
- Joseph Banks
- Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
- Sir Ian Blair
- Adam Blakeman
- Adrian Boult
- James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl Of Cardigan
- Robert Burton
- George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, 1st Marquess Of Buckingham
- William Camden
- George Canning
- Charles John Canning, 1st Earl Canning
- Richard Carew
- Lewis Carroll
- Robert Cecil
- Alan Clark
- Richard Curtis
- James Andrew Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquess Of Dalhousie
- Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl Of Derby
- David Dimbleby
- Alec Douglas-Home
- Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess Of Dufferin And Ava
- Anthony Eden
- Edward VII Of The United Kingdom
- Albert Einstein (elected to a five-year Research Studentship in 1931 )
- James Bruce, 8th Earl Of Elgin
- William Gladstone
- Granville George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville
- John Carteret, 3rd Earl Of Granville
- William Grenville
- Edward Gunter
- Edward Wood, 1st Earl Of Halifax
- Richard Hakluyt
- Quintin McGarel Hogg, Baron Hailsham Of St Marylebone
- Robert Hooke
- Anthony Howard
- Trevor Huddleston
- Ludovic Kennedy
- John Wodehouse, 1st Earl Of Kimberley
- Nigel Lawson
- Francis Godolphin Osborne, 5th Duke Of Leeds
- George Cornewall Lewis
- Matthew Gregory Lewis
- Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl Of Liverpool
- John Locke
- Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons , 2nd Baron Lyons, 1st Viscount and 1st Earl Lyons
- Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 1st Earl Of Minto
- Arthur Wellesley, Earl Of Mornington
- Thomas George Baring, 1st Earl Of Northbrook
- Robert Peel
- William Penn
- William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke Of Portland
- John Rawls
- Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl Of Rosebery
- A. L. Rowse
- John Ruskin
- Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess Of Salisbury
- Philip Sidney
- William Petty, 2nd Earl Of Shelburne
- Edward Granville Eliot, 3rd Earl Of St Germans
- John Taverner
- Henry Hotchkiss Townsend
- Hugh Trevor-Roper
- William Walton
- Peter Warlock
- Auberon Waugh
- Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley
- Charles Wesley
- John Wesley
:See also .
"The wind had dropped. There was even a glimpse of the moon riding behind the clouds. And now, a solemn and plangent token of Oxford's perpetuity, the first stroke of Great Tom sounded." Chapter 21,
Zuleika Dobson (1922),
Max Beerbohm
"I must say my thoughts wandered, but I kept turning the pages and watching the light fade, which in Peckwater, my dear, is quite an experience -- as darkness falls the stone seems positively to decay under one's eyes. I was reminded of some of those leprous facades in the
vieux port at Marseille, until suddenly I was disturbed by such a bawling and caterwauling as you never heard, and there, down in the little piazza, I saw a mob of about twenty terrible young men, and do you know what they were chanting
'We want Blanche. We want Blanche!' in a kind of litany."
Brideshead Revisited (1945),
Evelyn Waugh
"By way of light entertainment, I should tell the Committee that it is well known that a match between an archer and a golfer can be fairly close. I spent many a happy evening in the centre of
Peckwater Quadrangle at Christ Church, with a bow and arrow, trying to put an arrow over the Kilcannon building into the Mercury Pond in
Tom Quad . On occasion, the golfer would win and, on occasion, I would win. Unfortunately, that had to stop when I put an arrow through the bowler hat of the head porter. Luckily, he was unhurt and bore me no ill will. From that time on he always sent me a Christmas card which was signed "To Robin Hood from the Ancient Briton""
Lord Crawshaw ,
House Of Lords ,
Hansard , Tuesday 8 Jul 1997
- Adams, Reginald (1992). ''The college graces of Oxford and Cambridge.'' Perpetua Press. ISBN 1870882067.
