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Magpie Lane, Oxford

Oriel College, OxfordOxfordshire geography stubsStreets in OxfordUniversity College, OxfordUse British English from August 2017
Magpie lane
Magpie lane

Magpie Lane is a narrow historic lane in central Oxford, England. It leads south from the High Street where it is at its narrowest, now completely pedestrianised as a pavement, and north from the cobbled Merton Street. To the west is Oriel College (including the Rhodes building of 1910 at the northern end) and to the east is University College, two of the oldest Oxford colleges. On the northeast corner there is a 1902 house, now the Quod restaurant. A small cul-de-sac street, Kybald Street, leads off Magpie Lane at the southern end to the east, giving access to the rear of University College and Kybald Twychen, owned by Corpus Christi College. South from Merton Street, the lane continues as Grove Walk (a.k.a. Merton Grove or Grove Passage) between Merton College to the east and Corpus Christi College to the west, giving pedestrian access via railinged gates to Dead Man's Walk, Merton Field, and Christ Church Meadows. The building in the south-western corner of Merton College is also called Grove. The name perhaps has been derived from this area having been used as an orchard.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Magpie Lane, Oxford (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Magpie Lane, Oxford
Kybald Street, Oxford City Centre

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Latitude Longitude
N 51.751638 ° E -1.253104 °
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Kybald Street

Kybald Street
OX1 4ET Oxford, City Centre
England, United Kingdom
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Oriel College, Oxford
Oriel College, Oxford

Oriel College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. Located in Oriel Square, the college has the distinction of being the oldest royal foundation in Oxford (a title formerly claimed by University College, whose claim of being founded by King Alfred is no longer promoted). In recognition of this royal connection, the college has also been historically known as King's College and King's Hall. The reigning monarch of the United Kingdom (since 2022, Charles III) is the official visitor of the college.The original medieval foundation established in 1324 by Adam de Brome, under the patronage of King Edward II of England, was the House of the Blessed Mary at Oxford, and the college received a royal charter in 1326.: 1  In 1329, an additional royal grant of a manor house, La Oriole, eventually gave rise to its common name. The first design allowed for a provost and ten fellows, called "scholars", and the college remained a small body of graduate fellows until the 16th century, when it started to admit undergraduates. During the English Civil War, Oriel played host to high-ranking members of the king's Oxford Parliament.The main site of the college incorporates four medieval halls: Bedel Hall, St Mary Hall, St Martin Hall, and Tackley's Inn, the last being the oldest standing medieval hall in Oxford.: 2  The college has nearly 40 fellows, about 300 undergraduates and some 250 graduates. Oriel was the last of Oxford's men's colleges to admit women in 1985, after more than six centuries as an all-male institution. Today, however, the student body has almost equal numbers of men and women. Oriel's notable alumni include two Nobel laureates; prominent fellows have included founders of the Oxford Movement. Among Oriel's more notable possessions are a painting by Bernard van Orley and three pieces of medieval silver plate. As of the 2020–21 academic year, the college is ranked twentieth in academic performance out of thirty colleges in the Norrington Table, having topped the table in 2015–16.

Mob Quad
Mob Quad

Mob Quad is a four-sided group of buildings from the 13th and 14th centuries in Merton College, Oxford, surrounding a small lawn. It is often claimed to be the oldest quadrangle in Oxford and elsewhere, although Merton's own Front Quad was actually enclosed earlier (albeit with a less unified design) and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, says that its own Old Court is the oldest structure of its type in either Oxford or Cambridge. The quadrangle pattern has since been copied at many other colleges and universities worldwide. It was built in three distinct phases. The oldest part is the college's Treasury or Muniment Room that stands above and behind the arch in the north east corner. The roof of this part is strikingly steep and is made of stone in order to protect it (and its contents) from fire. The steep pitch of the roof is necessary to support the weight of the stone. The present roof was restored with new Purbeck stone in 1966. The upper floor has always been used to store the college muniments, while the ground floor was probably the original bursary. It is not known exactly when the building was completed, but there are references to it in the college accounts for 1288 and 1291. The Muniment Room being built above a vaulted arch is suggested as evidence that the range of buildings to the south was either planned at the time of the original design or was replacing an existing building. This range to the south of the Muniment Room (the East side) was complete by about 1310–1320. The matching North side is probably slightly earlier and apparently stands on the site of the former church of St John, which was no longer needed once the new chapel was complete. The college accounts indicate that the old church was being used as rooms by 1308, and it is possible that parts of its structure were incorporated into the new building.These buildings were designed, and are still used, as accommodation for members of the college. They consist of three storeys of rooms, the third being built in the steeply-pitched attics. The rooms are arranged in sets on either side of central wooden staircases. The walls are thick and faced in rag-finished Cotswold stone. There are no chimneys and although all the rooms had fireplaces and chimneys by about 1600, they have been removed in modern times as the coal fireplaces have been replaced with electric heating. The south and west ranges which complete the quadrangle were built in 1373–1378. They were built to provide more accommodation (on the ground floor) and to house the expanding college library (on the upper floor). The old part of the library is still there, and, still expanding, it also now occupies most of the ground floor as well (and other parts of the college). The large dormer windows were added as part of Warden Savile's rebuilding work which began in 1589. The origin of the name "Mob Quad" is obscure. On older plans and accounts the quad is called variously Little Quadrangle, Old Quadrangle, Bachelors' Quadrangle (that is, B.A. Fellows), Postmasters' Quadrangle, and Undergraduates' Quadrangle (at least after the construction of Fellows' Quadrangle). The word "mob", derived from the Latin mobile vulgus (the fickle crowd) does not appear in English until the late 17th century, and was not commonly used for Mob Quad until the end of the 18th century. It was possibly originally a humorous description of the occupants. The lawn is a 20th-century addition.

Merton College Library
Merton College Library

Merton College Library (in Merton College, Oxford) is one of the earliest libraries in England and the oldest academic library in the world still in continuous daily use. The library is located in several parts of the college, and houses a priceless collection of early printed books and more than 300 medieval manuscripts. The historic collection was initially built through benefactions, including manuscripts donated by the medieval clergyman William Reade. The library also contains early printed books from the personal libraries of Griffin Higgs and Henry Kent, who originally donated approximately 600 and 800 volumes respectively. The main collection runs to approximately 70,000 volumes. The oldest part, known as the Upper Library, is on the first floor of two orthogonal ranges of buildings that were built around 1373 by William Humberville as part of the completion of Mob Quad, one of the first collegiate quadrangles. The Upper Library was improved in the 16th century under Warden Sir Henry Savile. Large dormer windows were added to the roof to allow more light in, and Thomas Bodley reorganized it in the new Continental style; the old book chests and lecterns were replaced by bookshelves — among the first to be used in England — with benches between them. The Upper Library still retains these 16th-century fittings. It also contains a number of book chests, some chained books, one of Elizabeth I's Welsh Bibles, a matching pair of 16th-century globes (one of the earth, the other of the heavens), and a collection of astrolabes and other early scientific instruments. Although the main academic library is housed elsewhere, the Upper Library is still regularly used by members of the college and is open to visitors by arrangement. The library also has important collections of papers and manuscripts from three former Mertonians: mountaineer Andrew "Sandy" Irvine and authors T. S. Eliot and Max Beerbohm. The Library is mentioned in the 1925 novel The Great Gatsby written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, where the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby claims to be an "Oxford man".

Merton College, Oxford
Merton College, Oxford

Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to support it. An important feature of de Merton's foundation was that this "college" was to be self-governing and the endowments were directly vested in the Warden and Fellows.By 1274, when Walter retired from royal service and made his final revisions to the college statutes, the community was consolidated at its present site in the south east corner of the city of Oxford, and a rapid programme of building commenced. The hall and the chapel and the rest of the front quad were complete before the end of the 13th century. Mob Quad, one of Merton's quadrangles, was constructed between 1288 and 1378, and is claimed to be the oldest quadrangle in Oxford, while Merton College Library, located in Mob Quad and dating from 1373, is the oldest continuously functioning library for university academics and students in the world.Like many of Oxford's colleges, Merton admitted its first mixed-sex cohort in 1979, after over seven centuries as an institution for men only. Merton's second female warden, Irene Tracey, was appointed as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 2022, and Professor Jennifer Payne was subsequently elected as acting warden.Alumni and academics past and present include five Nobel laureates, the writer J.R.R. Tolkien, who was Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 to 1959, and Liz Truss, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in September and October 2022. Merton is one of the wealthiest colleges in Oxford and held funds totalling £298 million as of July 2020. Merton has a strong reputation for academic success, having regularly ranked first in the Norrington Table.