Oxford

The Christ College courtyard, complete with freshers

We spent a weekend in Oxford recently, having only ever been to Cambridge I was interested to make my own judgement in the eternal Ox-Bridge question.  We managed to chose an interesting weekend to visit, it being "fresher" week.  From what we could work out fresher week is like Australian orientation week, the week where all the new graduates turned up to settle in and work out what they were up for.  It was certainly a different experience in Oxford than it was at the good old ANU.

In fact for a while we were trying to work out who all the people walking around in their robes were.  We thought it must have been some sort of graduation ceremony, what with the robes, the high spirits and the photos of people holding what looked like

Random really old house in Oxford

diplomas, but no that's just how they roll in Oxford.  I have to say I was never that excited to start university, there was popping of champagne corks from balconies.  I thought the joy came after you had finished your studies, not before it?

But perhaps that's one of the strange things about Oxford.  It is a beautiful town, but the colleges are all so separate from the townspeople.  I think this is where the idea of academics being off in their ivory towers comes from.  There was none of the openness and freedom that I'm used to from Australian universities.  Here you had to pay to go into any part of the university, and most of them were outright shut, and when I say shut, I mean the tiny door, the only entrance in their high walls, was closed. No learning for anyone who hasn't paid for the right to be there.  And that's very much what it felt like, that they were somehow protecting what they had, not letting just anyone experience what they have, at least not without paying for the privilege.

All-Saints College, complete with very high walls

Maybe this is an aspect of the class society of Britain that I am completely unaware of, the feeling that if you had studied at Oxford then you are somehow special, somehow smarter or better than everyone else.  As a very much middle-class Australian it feels very strange to see this in action.  I mean you go to any university in Australia you are probably going to get a decent education, sure some perhaps better than others depending on what you study, but in general I would say we're all fairly equal.  Whereas in Oxford I think part of the incredible high-spirits was purely the fact that these people had been accepted into Oxford, that they were celebrating before they had actually achieved anything.  Though on the other hand, as Dave put it, it is in fresher week that you have the highest proportion of people around who will fail or drop out.  Maybe all the nerds were already locked up behind their walls feverishly studying.

Stradivarius in the Ashmolean Museum

This feeling of barricades and walls could also be partly historical, being fair to Oxford, it was attacked by Oliver Cromwell during the Civil Wall, so the defenses would have had a real purpose back then.  Perhaps in those days academics had to separate themselves from the general population to avoid being accused of sorcery or witchcraft?

What is also apparent is just how rich and important this town must have been, if it not still is.  Some of the items in the Ashmolean museum, for instance, feel out of place in what is a small English town, rows and rows of Greek amphora, a Stradivarius, paintings by Constable, these are expensive items, and yet somehow Oxford can afford to have them all and many more.

We stayed two full days there, to be honest I think a day and a half is probably enough to cover the sights, and after a while you kind of get museum-ed out.  The brain can only take so much learning at once.

Haven't I seen you before?

The photo to the left was also in the Ashmolean, I took a photo of it because when we visited Buckingham Palace there was an exhibition of Dutch landscape artists.  One of the rooms had just preparatory sketches of different artists for their works, and I am sure that one of the sketches was for this painting.  Pretty freaky really, I'm already starting to see connections in my visits to places.

Hammy clouds

Apparently the Ashmolean was the first purpose built museum in England, and was opened in 1683.  Though the collection has long since moved from this original building, having outgrown it in the 1800's.  The original collection was begun by a father and son team who made many voyages to Asia and the Americas, when they died their collection was acquired by Elias Ashmole, thus the name. It was he who donated it to the university and had the special building made for it.

I had to include this last painting, it's by John Constable, and it's of clouds, in case you can't tell.  What's special about these clouds is that they happened to be clouds over Hampstead.  I'm living in the same suburb as John Constable used to live and paint.  Now that's kind of cool.

Dragon vs Elephant : Mortal Combat

Departure of Marco Polo

The highlight for me of Oxford was visiting the exhibition at the Bodleian Library, this is one of six places in Britain which is entitled to receive a copy of every book published in Britain.  It was founded in 1320, so you can imagine it has some super nice things in it's collection.

Nice building, the Bodleian

As well as recent works there was also a copy of Newton's Principia, which was exciting for me, as well as one of the copies of the Magna Carta.  Of course I didn't take any photos of these important works.

I did take a photo of a scene in a book which was describing the different animals of the world.  Shown is a dragon fighting an elephant, they are mortal enemies in case you didn't know.
  There was also a book illustrating the departure of Marco Polo for his voyage around the world.  I always liked Marco Polo, I feel like he doesn't get his due recognition, being the first person to circumnavigate the globe.  All the praise seems to go to Christopher Columbus instead.

Radcliffe Camera, it's a reading room for the Bodelian Library, built in 1748.  Unfortunately no admittance for non-students

Water lillies in the greenhouses, the approach here was very much jungle, rather than formal cultivation

For me, no city visit would be complete with out visiting the Botanic Gardens.  These are Britain's oldest, being founded in 1621, there is a yew

I've never seen a cactus so big, it's like a tree has had a cactus grafted onto it.

tree which dates from that period.  I'm assuming that's the tree which the path went around in a rather obvious manner.  I think it was a little expensive, but then that seems to be the way over here, the gardens are expensive, but the museums are free, which is the opposite to France.  Still they did have a greenhouse full of Venus fly-traps, which I can never get enough of.  I think they should sell little bags of slightly anaesthetised flies at the front counter so we can feed the plants. 

Black and white, could that be the yew tree in the background?

Bridge of Sighs, built in 1914

We couldn't go to Oxford without visiting at least one of the colleges.  By complete chance that ended up being Christ Church college, which I think is were Harry Potter was filmed, at least in the dining hall.  Unfortunately the dining hall was closed when we visited, something to do with the inhabitants wanting lunch.  We could see the rest of the buildings though, all very impressive.  Christ Church dates from 1525 when Cardinal Wolsey founded it as a school to train cardinals.  As a fan of the Tudors and Thomas Cromwell (Oliver Cromwell's less well known great-great-great uncle) I was a bit excited.

The Christ Church chapel

The Christ Church quadrangle

The buildings of Christ Church

The buildings are all very pretty, but again you get the feeling that they are trying hard to maintain their air of elitism.  Maybe that's the middle-class in me, or the fact that I'm from Australia, but it just seems odd to me to see a place which should be all about learning and sharing knowledge so jealously guarding it's secrets.  I guess though that if they didn't monitor the numbers perhaps they would be overrun.  People don't travel from all over the world to visit the extensive grounds of ANU afterall, but maybe that also has something to do with the fact that the ANU doesn't really purport to be some mystical place of learning.

After the beautiful buildings and another dose of freshers it was off to the Natural History Museum.  I'm a bit of a fan of Natural History museums, and this one had a real dead dodo.  There was also an exhibit to Lewis Carroll there (who was an Oxford mathematics professor for those who didn't know).  And an awful lot of skeletons and dinosaurs, which again just showed how long Oxford has been a place of knowledge.

Dead as a .....

Raaaaah!!! Tyrannosaurus Rex with it's non-existent forearms

Lines of skeletons

I looooved this building!

They had a really great exhibit here which was a real live functioning beehive with an exit to the outside world.  You could see the honey being made and the bees greeting each other as they went in and out.  I didn't see any of the famous wiggle dances though, so perhaps there was no nectar to be found nearby.

Oxford high street and the fields beyond

Our final visit was to the Museum of the History of Science, this was housed in the old Ashmolean building.  We were starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel with this one, as the extensive collection seemed to consist of almost exclusively astrolabes and compasses.  There was some cool stuff in amongst this.  In particular an elephant's tooth, apparently when an elephant is born all it's teeth are already lined up conveyor belt style and as they fall out the next one moves along.  When the last one falls out the animal dies, I'm not sure if that's because they starve to death or if there is some powerful connection between an elephant's teeth and it's beating heart.

An elephant's tooth

A at-home radium kit.  Hours of fun!