is one of the constituent colleges of the
University Of Oxford in the
United Kingdom . It is located in Catte Street, directly opposite the main entrance of the original
Bodleian Library .
The college was originally founded as in
1282 by
Elias De Hertford . In medieval Oxford,
Halls were primarily lodging houses for students and resident tutors, and thus did not have the same status as fully-fledged
Colleges . Many of the great minds of the English Renaissance studied at what would eventually become Hertford College including the metaphysical poet
John Donne , satirist
Jonathan Swift , the political theorist
Thomas Hobbes , and the first translator of the Bible into English,
William Tyndale . The Hall became Hertford College in
1740 . Due to funding problems, the College's buildings were taken over as Magdalen Hall (not related to the similarly named
Magdalen College whose separate Hall had been incorporated into the University as a college years before)
1 in
1822 . In
1874 , the combined Hertford College/Magdalen Hall was finally re-established once again as a full college, largely due to the sponsorship of
Sir Thomas Baring . Within only seven years, the college came
Head Of The River in the annual college boat races.
Hertford was one of the first five
Co-educational colleges in the university. It has an almost equal gender balance with a slightly higher proportion of women to men. Traditionally seen as a progressive college, in the
1960s Hertford was one of the first colleges to encourage applicants from
State Schools , and has a significantly higher proportion of students from state schools relative to
Private Schools .
More recently the college has benefited from its firm financial footing. With an aggressive buying policy, its library collection has become one of the largest amongst the colleges and contains over 40,000 volumes. Among these are many rare seventeenth century manuscripts and an original edition of Hobbes' ''
Leviathan '' given as a personal gift to the college where he prepared his best-known work. Students are accommodated for the full three years either on the main site or on college-owned property primarily in North Oxford and the Folly Bridge area. A new Hertford Graduate Centre fronting the Thames has also been built near Folly Bridge and was opened in 2000. The college playing fields include a pavilion with facilities for most major team sports; its shared boathouse has been recently rebuilt, and the college has a new student gym. Despite its reputation for a relaxed atmosphere Hertford has featured well in exam results, often finishing among the top five university-wide.
The main college consists of three quadrangles: ''Old Quadrangle'', ''New Quadrangle'', and ''Holywell Quadrangle''.
The Old Quadrangle (Old quad or OB (old building) quad for short), as the name suggests, is the oldest and the original quadrangle. It incorporates the lodge, library, chapel, hall, bursary and other administrative buildings. It is also home to many of the studies of senior fellows and tutors. Old quad is the only Hertford quadrangle to have a lawn in the centre, in the traditional college style, and its flower embossed gate dates from the sixteenth century. The lawn is off-limits during Michaelmas and Hilary terms but freely traversable during Trinity term. Senior fellows of the college are granted the privilege of being able to walk across the lawn all year round.
The New Quadrangle (New Quad or NB quad for short) is connected to the Old Quadrangle via the famous ''Hertford Bridge'', also known as the
Bridge Of Sighs , which was designed by
Thomas Graham Jackson . New quad is primarily composed of undergraduate housing and associated facilities. With views of the
Sheldonian Theatre the MCR (Middle Common Room) 'Octagon' incorporates part of a sixteenth century chapel built into the old city wall. It is also situated in New quad and is off limits to all undergraduates except those enrolled as mature students.
Holywell Quadrangle backs directly onto New quad, and the two are connected by an arched corridor that also contains the steps down to Hertford's subterranean bar, the only fully student-run bar in Oxford. Holywell is almost exclusively first-year undergraduate housing and therefore contains the JCR (Junior Common Room). The Baring Room occupies the highest level of one of five staircases in Holywell and is named after the benefactor whose funding aided Hertford's classificatory transition from a hall of residence to a fully fledged college.
:See also .
- Goudie, Andrew (ed.), ''Seven Hundred Years of an Oxford College: Hertford College, 1284–1984'', (Hertford College, Oxford).
