fpb | Picspam two: Oxford

I have a lot more photos of Rome to put up, but I thought I would break off to show a few pictures of another place I love.

Oxford was built to dominate the meeting of the rivers Isis (Thames) and Cherwell. There was a castle here before there was a school, but the castle is gone and the school remains. So do the rivers: this is a branch of the Isis.

This curious belltower without a church is called the Carfax and is the traditional centre of the city of Oxford, at the meeting of High Street and Cornmarket. It is a commercial rather than academic area, and we remember that Oxford, unlike Cambridge, has always been and still is as much a trading and manufacturing town as a centre of learning. Overheard long ago at a bus stop, one little old lady to another: "Well, I still say it's a bloody funny place to put a university in!"

St.John's College - my alma mater. You can hardly tell from this photo, but it was taken very early in the morning, and the effect of the dark bulk of the college, with its few shining light, against the barely lighter sky, was oddly ominous. I took no more photos of famous places that day because the whole city was overwhelmed with a mob of tourists.

Oxford is full of ancient and actually medieval buildings. I don't know whether this is one, but it sure looked like it.

For most of its history, Oxford was essentially a church institution, and its teachers were supposed to be unmarried. The greatest event in the history of the university, which started its golden age, was the reform in the early eighteen-seventies that allowed them to marry. One of its effects was the explosion of the city northwards along the Banbury and Woodstock roads, as the newly enfranchised professors built large, comfortable and often graciously attractive homes for their new families. This is one of these; others have since themselvels become part of the university, as new colleges, faculty centres, or libraries, or even independent schools, because a house built for a Victorian family is a bit more than today's families need.

This strange little public fountain, long since dried out, lay at the corner of the road where I first lived in Oxford (and where I first fell in love). So it means something to me, but I also want to put it in because it is so unlike anything you would normally find in an English town.