Oxford Rambles

Ashmolean Museum

Just 18 Miles from our modest hovel lies the city of the "Dreaming Spires", the historic University City of Oxford. The City is famous the world over for its University and place in history. For over 800 years, it has been a home to royalty and scholars, and since the 9th century an established town, although people are known to have lived in the area for thousands of years. So, last Saturday suffering from post election blues and with a meeting in Oxford we headed over for a ramble amongst Academiae Oxoniensia with a visit to the fascinating Museum of Science, a ramble through the lively covered market (an antidote to clone town British High Streets) and a browse and some judicious purchases in Blackwell’s specialist music shop. Then to cap it all over to Jericho for Dinner with friends in the ever reliable Bistro Blanc, the Brasserie chain named after the two Michelin Star French Chef, Raymond Blanc who describes it thus;





“Oxford was my first love, close to the Manoir in a town that I now call home. Two houses in the Jericho area of the city formed the base for the building of what was then called Petit Blanc. Not a classical Brasserie in the true sense of the word, it is split into two main rooms and a small private dining room. This gives it an intimate and bubbly atmosphere. The first room has light from three sides, bathing diners throughout the day whilst the back room has a view on my little garden. This Garden Room is available for private hire and can accommodate up to 110 guests. The small Salon Prive holds about 12 people and it pleases me to see it often used for family celebrations, the noise spilling out into the main restaurant. Most Sundays I have lunch here, chez moi.”

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/12/brasserie-blanc.html

I enjoyed an excellent feastie @ Bistro Blanc where everything was just right. To start I had a Leek & potato soup followed by grilled Ocean Perch with prawn potatoes and rosemary butter. All this was then capped by a Kirsch Savarin with poached red fruits and crème fraiche and washed down with an excellent glass of Domaine de la Provequiere VDP Sauvignon Blanc.



This is the “Lunch with wine” menu which is available for £14.95 for three courses and a glass of wine not just at lunchtime but (as for us) in the early evening from 5.30 to 7.30. At this price for this standard of cooking and surroundings it is a rather attractive deal, n’est pas?


Fishmonger in the Covered Market

Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world and lays claim to nine centuries of continuous existence. As an internationally renowned centre for teaching and research, Oxford attracts students and scholars from across the globe, with almost a quarter of the students from overseas. More than 130 nationalities are represented among a student population of over 18,000. Oxford is a collegiate university, with 39 self-governing colleges related to the University in a type of federal system. There are also seven Permanent Private Halls, founded by different Christian denominations. Thirty colleges and all halls admit students for both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Seven other colleges are for graduates only; one has Fellows only, and one specializes in part-time and continuing education. Here is how to tour Oxford in a day whilst avoiding the usual tourist traps on DC’s famous ROT* (* Reduced Oxford Tour)

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/day-in-oxford.html


Sheldonian Theatre

The colleges function more like halls of residence than educational institutions in their own right. Students’ social lives revolve around the colleges in which they are enrolled, but teaching is often organised university-wide. The practical result is a city-wide campus that requires one to watch out for student bikers whizzing by on their way to lectures or classes at different colleges. Also, there seems to be a certain cachet to having the oldest and squeakiest bike possible, and bicycle helmets are unheard of.


The Tower of Magdalen College where at dawn on the 1st May the Choiristers ascend to the top and sing Matins to welcome the summer.

With so much learning going on Oxford contains many homes to the Muses or Museums to give them their more familiar title. There is the Pitts River Museum, The Museum of Oxford, The Museum of the History of Science, The Bates Collection of Musical Instruments, The Christchurch Picture Gallery and The Oxford Museum of Natural History. Oxford's museums and collections are world renowned. They provide an important resource for scholars around the world, and welcome visits from members of the public. More than a million people visit the University’s museums and collections every year. For me from all this abundance of riches one of my favourite places to visit is what has been the somewhat forbidding and eccentric Ashmolean Museum. So we did again today for tea before heading to the original building in High Street beside the Sheldonian Theatre .



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/11/oxfords-ashmolean-museum.html



On this Saturday there was a graduation (or conferring in Oxford Speak) at the Sheldonian and in the Oxford tradition the gown draped students walk (process, in Oxford Speak) from their College with their tutors to receive their degrees after which they can wear the mortar board hats which denote they are graduates. The graduation ceremonies are from each college so they tend to be small scale with the students and families and friends dressed up to the nines for this happy occasion. Oxford is hugely competitive to get into and there is a considerable sense of achievement on these occasions, a contrast to Britain’s worst University in Wolverhampton.


Off to Conferring


Back from Conferring

Here are some shots and reflections on Oxford in the busy run up to Xmas where the streets are more lively than normal with entertainers and evangelists!

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/12/xmas-is-coming.html



The proposition of setting a mathematical thriller in Oxford is interesting and has some previous form. A mathematician and Divine of Christchurch College Oxford, Charles Dodgson published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, under the pen-name Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier -- Lewis Carroll. The texts of Lewis Carroll’s works are littered with mathematics and probability even if Alice gets some of it wrong!



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/05/oxford-murders.html

On the way back after our early dinner at Bistro Blanc we stopped off at the wonderful Notley Abbey near Thame where the actors Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh spent their happiest years. It still entices with its wonderful languorous and secluded setting surrounded by branches and pools of the River Thame which first enticed monks to build their abbey here in the 12th Century. Vivien & Larry first saw the Abbey in 1943.



It was overgrown and in desperate need of restoration. Larry instantly fell in love with it, especially since he found out that it had been endowed by Henry V. Vivien was sceptical and considered it hopeless. Much of the home could not be viewed from inside because ceilings were caving, floors rotting, and pipes were broken. Nevertheless, the Olivier’s purchased it in February 1945 and immediately began work on it. Vivien, too, soon fell in love with the Abbey. They put all their savings into repairing the Abbey. They focused on the large hall, study, 3 reception rooms, and bedrooms. With the help of decorators Sybil Colfax and John Fowler, Vivien put her personal touch in each room of Notley. Regency stripes were used and large pieces of furniture and artwork were chosen.






Notley Abbey

"I will have everything that I want at Notley – as well as my husband” Vivien Leigh once said.

"Of all the houses I've lived in over the years, Notley is my favourite. It was absolutely enchanting, and it enchanted me. At Notley I had an affair with the past. For me it had mesmeric power; I could easily drown in its atmosphere. I could not leave it alone, I was a child lost in its history. Perhaps I loved it too much, if that is possible." - Laurence Olivier in Confessions of an Actor




Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh at Notley Abbey

Everybody who was anybody in the world of Stage and Screen in the 1950s made their way to Notley where the Oliviers were famed for their hospitality.


The Oxford made Mini in cake in the Covered Market

Home tired yet refreshed. Oxford still casts its spell and seems a unique place in this world. A busy town, a wealthy town whose house prices match London, a working town where the tradition of motor car manufacture pioneered by Morris Garages (MG) is kept alive at the Mini Plant at Cowley. But it is a City with a different demographic, where you can wander through the world’s biggest university bookshop, wander among its 39 Colleges and its Halls with associated libraries, laboratories and playing fields. It is an International City with students, staff, researchers and tourists from across the globe. A cultured city where you can go to six museums or at least 10 classical concerts on any given day.


Situated in Cornmarket is the oldest building in Oxford, dating from 1040. The tower of St Michael at the Northgate is Saxon in origin.

But for all that it is a quintessentially English City with at its heart a Saxon Tower over a thousand years old and where one of its best known writers was a J.R. Tolkien who was a Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University. The Anglo-Saxons were the people who ruled England for 600 years, forming the basis of its culture, language and borders and who gave it its name.




Black Tulip at the Ashmolean

The writer Matthew Arnold summed up Oxford’s special sense of place best;

Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,
The tender purple spray on copse and briers!
And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty's heightening

- Matthew Arnold


All Souls College