Christ Church, Oxford

• 1. Introduction

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  Christ Church, Oxford is the only institution in the world that is simultaneously a university college and a cathedral. Every night at 9:05 pm GMT, a bell named Great Tom rings 101 times from a tower designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The bell tolls once for each of the original 100 scholars of the college, plus one extra stroke added in 1664. That single additional peal is a small detail, but it captures something essential about this place: centuries of accumulation, one layer of tradition settled upon another.

  The college was founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, though its roots stretch back another two decades to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. What began as an act of political ambition ended as one of the most storied institutions in the English-speaking world, counting 13 British prime ministers, multiple monarchs, philosophers, scientists, and novelists among its former students. How does a place carry that much history without collapsing under the weight of it? And what does it mean, in the 21st century, to study in a hall that once served as a wartime parliament?

• 2. Wolsey's Ambition, Henry's College

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  In 1525, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey stood at the height of his power. Lord Chancellor of England and Archbishop of York, he suppressed St Frideswide's Priory in Oxford and used the proceeds from dissolving several minor priories, including Bayham Old Abbey and Wallingford Priory, to raise a grand new college. He named it Cardinal College and planned it on a magnificent scale, appointing John Taverner as its first music director that same year.

  Wolsey fell from royal favour in 1529, and his college fell with him. The buildings stood three-quarters complete, and they would remain that way for 140 years. By 1531, the college was formally suppressed. Henry VIII refounded it in 1532 as King Henry VIII's College, a name that carried the king's ownership plainly. Then in 1546, having broken from the Catholic Church and accumulated enormous wealth through the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry refounded it again as Christ Church. He folded the former priory church into his new institution, making it simultaneously a college chapel and the cathedral of the newly created Diocese of Oxford.

  Shakespeare wrote lines honoring Wolsey's educational legacy, referring to the "twins of learning" he raised at Ipswich and Oxford. One fell with its founder; the other, though unfinished, rose to become something Wolsey himself had not imagined.

• 3. A College Unlike Any Other

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  Christ Church's formal title is "The Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford of the Foundation of King Henry the Eighth." It is the only academic institution in the world that is also a cathedral, the seat of the Bishop of Oxford. The head of the college is the Dean of Christ Church, who must be an Anglican cleric appointed by the Crown. That single requirement makes Christ Church unique among Oxford colleges.

  The governing body numbers around 60 members, including the dean, the seven members of the cathedral chapter, statutory professors, and early-career development fellows. Among its current members are Sir John Bell and Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The visitor of Christ Church is the reigning British sovereign, a status that makes even the monarch a formal part of the college's governance structure.

  The fellows of other Oxford colleges have equivalent figures at Christ Church called the "Students of Christ Church," a name that has caused endless confusion because the students of most colleges are junior members. At Christ Church, the Students are the governing body's equivalent of fellows. Until the later 19th century, these Students had no governing powers at all; those resided entirely with the dean and chapter. The college's own statutes insist on one firm point of language: the institution is always "Christ Church," never "Christ Church College."

• 4. Architecture Across Centuries

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  Tom Tower, the gate-tower that Christopher Wren designed to crown Wolsey's unfinished Great Quadrangle, frames the college's most famous image. Tom Quad, which the tower guards, is the largest quadrangle in Oxford. The Great Dining Hall, which sits within it, was grand enough that King Charles I chose it as his wartime parliament during the English Civil War, using the Deanery next door as his palace.

  On the evening of the 29th of May 1645, during the second siege of Oxford, a cannon shot weighing nine pounds fell from the Parliamentarians' position at Marston and struck the wall on the north side of that same Hall. The building absorbed the blow and stands today.

  The college's grounds cover approximately 175 acres, taking in Christ Church Meadow, Aston's Eyot, and several other parcels. In October 1783, the meadow was the site of James Sadler's first hot air balloon ascent in Britain. The meadow is grazed by English Longhorn cattle and remains open to the public year-round. The college gardens, quadrangles, and meadow are all Grade I listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. The Picture Gallery houses works bequeathed by General John Guise (1682/3-1765), whose gift enabled the creation of the first public art gallery in Britain.

• 5. Alumni Who Shaped the World

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  Thirteen British prime ministers studied at Christ Church, more than any other Oxbridge college. Among them were William Ewart Gladstone, who studied from 1828 to 1831; Sir Robert Peel, who held office from 1841 to 1846; and Anthony Eden, who served from 1955 to 1957. Former prime ministers of Pakistan and Ceylon also attended.

  Philosopher John Locke, whose ideas shaped liberal democracy, studied here, as did John Rawls, A. J. Ayer, Gilbert Ryle, Michael Dummett, John Searle, and Daniel Dennett. In the sciences, Robert Hooke, the polymath natural philosopher, came from Christ Church, as did developmental biologist John B. Gurdon, who shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and radio astronomer Sir Martin Ryle. Albert Einstein held an association with the college as a learned research fellow.

  Writer Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, was a Christ Church man, and poet W. H. Auden studied here too. William Penn, who founded Pennsylvania, was a student here. King Edward VII and King William II of the Netherlands both attended. The Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler, who are associated with the founding of Facebook, also studied at the college. For more than four centuries, Christ Church admitted men only; the first female students matriculated in 1980.

• 6. The Choir and Its Recordings

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  Christ Church Cathedral Choir has twelve adult singers and sixteen boys, whose ages range from eight to thirteen. The boys attend Christ Church Cathedral School and are chosen on musical ability alone. Until 2019, the choir was entirely male; that year, alto Elizabeth Nurse became the first female clerk in the choir's history.

  The choir's first director was John Taverner, appointed by Cardinal Wolsey in 1526. The lineage from that appointment to the present spans five centuries. In more recent decades, the choir recorded works by contemporary composers including John Tavener, William Mathias, and Howard Goodall, who is also patron of Christ Church Music Society. The choir sang Goodall's television theme music for Mr. Bean and Vicar of Dibley.

  In 2002, the choir was the subject of the Channel 4 documentary Howard Goodall's Great Dates, which was nominated at the Montreux TV Festival in the arts programme category and later broadcast internationally. Their 2011 recording Treasures of Christ Church debuted as the highest new entry in the UK Specialist Classical chart, and featured on BBC Radio 3's In Tune on the 26th of September that year. The college choir, separate from the cathedral choir, is always a student-run society and sings Evensong once a week during term time.

• 7. In Fiction and Film

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  Evelyn Waugh set parts of Brideshead Revisited in the college's buildings and grounds. Lewis Carroll drew on his life at Christ Church for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Hilary Mantel referenced the college by its earlier name, Cardinal College, in the Wolf Hall trilogy. Matthew Arnold's poem "The Scholar-Gipsy" describes looking back at Christ Church Hall from the hills above Oxford, a glance at the "line of festal light" through a winter snowstorm.

  More recently, the college's architecture has served as a backdrop for the Harry Potter film series and for The Golden Compass, the film adaptation of Philip Pullman's Northern Lights. Those appearances have made Christ Church the most visited Oxford college for tourists, drawing close to half a million visitors each year.

  The college's architectural influence extends beyond film. NUI Galway built a reproduction of Tom Quad. The University of Chicago's Hutchinson Hall, the dining hall of Risley Residential College at Cornell University, and the Gothic hall of Kneuterdijk Palace all reproduce the Christ Church dining hall. ChristChurch Cathedral in New Zealand, after which the city of Christchurch is named, takes its own name from Christ Church, Oxford. The stained glass windows in the cathedral include works by the Pre-Raphaelite William Morris group, designed by Edward Burne-Jones.