St Mary the Virgin’s Church is more commonly known as the University Church because it has been the official church of Oxford University since at least the 12th century. Special university occasions including the awarding of degrees would have taken place here. It was also the site of the university library until Duke Humfrey’s Library was opened.
One of the things I definitely wanted to do on my visit to Oxford was to do a tour of the Bodleian Library, to which I did face some obstacles. I’d done a lot of research before my visit and the tour I had really wanted to go on was the 90 minute tour which basically takes in all the places you aren’t normally allowed to go as a member of the public. However, tickets are limited and supposedly go on sale online exactly one month before your proposed visit. I say supposedly because I had been meticulous about working out when that would be (my birthday as it happened) and checked the day before to make sure I had the right page bookmarked only to find out that all the tickets had already sold out. My advice would therefore be not to trust the website and keep checking early every day before your trip. This 90 minute tour is one of only two ways of going inside the Radcliffe Camera building, the other is the Radcliffe Camera and City Walking Tour which I promptly booked and which will feature in a later post.
The Weston Library is part of the Bodleian Libraries and is where you go to book on the day tours – many areas of the Bodleian can only be accessed by members of the public via official tours (I’ll talk more about the process of booking in a later post where I talk about the tours I went on). It is also an exhibition space which had three free exhibitions on when I visited.
Back in June, thankfully before the first of our heatwaves, I spent a long weekend in Oxford. I’ve actually been to the city a number of times, but always to meet up with friends as its a convenient half way point to where we were all living, but I’d never gone into any of the museums or libraries that Oxford is famous for and decided it was time to rectify that. The first place I visited after checking into my hotel was The Sheldonian Theatre. In fact I visited here twice, the first time to go inside the cupola and the second to attend a violin concerto.
Here’s a round up of some things to see and do in Winchester that didn’t quite justify their own post. First up:
Abbey Gardens
Abbey Gardens is a lovely space just off to the side of the King Alfred statue mentioned in a previous post. I only walked through here while waiting for a bus nearby. This is the former site of St Mary’s Abbey, hence the name. The official residence of the Lord Mayor of Winchester is in the gardens as well as the usual benches and flowerbeds. The River Itchen also runs through here.
The Hospital of St. Cross was founded by Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester and grandson of William the Conqueror in 1136. It is one of the oldest continuing almshouses in England. It was to house 13 frail men who were unable to work and feed 100 daily. Later in the 15th century the Almshouse of Nobel Poverty was set up and the name was combined.
The Winchester City Mill is one of the oldest watermills in the country a mill having existed on the site since at least Saxon times, possibly on the site of an earlier Roman mill. Extremely profitable to begin with it had fallen into disrepair by 1471 and then gifted to the city in 1554 by Mary I after her marriage to Philip of Spain at Winchester Cathedral.
Holy Trinity Church was built in 1853-4 and I only really popped in because I needed somewhere to sit down away from the sun.
I’ve wanted to visit Winchester Cathedral for a while now due to the Jane Austen connection (she is buried here) but until I arrived I had no idea how large and full of interesting tombs, artefacts and museums it would prove to be.
Back in March I travelled down to Winchester for a week, in part because visiting some Jane Austen related sites has long been on my bucket list, but also because I got an insanely cheap deal on train tickets. Unfortunately Jane Austen’s House was closed for refurbishment (but you can see a photo of the outside further down) – this includes things like her writing desk so I will be back at some point. But within the same village is Chawton House where she spent a lot of her time – it belonged to Austen’s brother Edward and is still owned by his descendents (though run via the Chawton House Trust as a charity).
