Hertford College

History

Hart Hall and the first Hertford College

The first Hertford College began life as Hart Hall (Aula Cervina) in the 1280s, a small tenement built roughly where the college's Old Hall is today, a few paces along New College Lane on the southern side. In medieval Oxford, academic halls were primarily lodging houses for students and resident tutors.

The original tenement, mentioned in the deed of 1283, which was bought by Elias de Hertford from Walter de Grendon, mercer, lay between a tenement of the university (Blackhall) on the west, and a tenement of the Prioress of Studley on the east. In the deed by which Elias de Hertford sells it to John de Dokelynton in 1301, this last tenement is called Micheldhall. The deed was made over to his son, also Elias, in 1301. The name of the hall was likely a humorous reduction of the name of its founder's home town, and allowed for the use of the symbol of a hart to be used for identification.

At that time, New College Lane was known as Hammer Hall Lane (named after a hall to the east, as New College had not then been founded), and its northern side was the old town wall. The corner of Hammer Hall Lane and Catte Street (which had a postern in the wall called Smithgate) was taken by Black Hall, which was the place of John Wycliffe's imprisonment by the Vice-Chancellor around 1378. On the other side of Hart Hall along the lane was Shield Hall. On Catte Street itself was the entrance to Arthur Hall, which lay down a narrow passage behind Hart Hall, and Cat Hall (Aula Murilegorum), which stood further south, roughly where the Principal's Lodgings now stand.

The younger Elias sold on Hart Hall (named in this deed as 'le Herthalle') after a month to a wealthy local fishmonger John of Ducklington, who, seven years later, bought Arthur Hall and annexed it to Hart Hall. In 1312, John sold the two halls to Walter de Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, who desired to found a college. After just over a year, Stapledon moved his scholars to a larger site that he had purchased on Turl Street, which became Stapledon Hall, later Exeter College. However, Exeter College retained certain rights over Hart Hall, with which it plagued the hall's development for centuries.

In 1379, Hart Hall and Black Hall were rented by William of Wykeham as a temporary home for his scholars as his New College, to the east along what became New College Lane, was being built. The first two Wardens of New College also appear as Principals of Hart Hall. Until the 17th century, there is evidence of scholars (including Thomas Ken) matriculating at Hart Hall while waiting for a vacancy at New College. By this time, it appears that Shield Hall had been partly taken over by Hart Hall and partly demolished to make way for New College's cloister. Although Black Hall continued a separate existence, its principal was often the same as Hart Hall's. In 1490, Hart Hall is described as having a library, which was unusual for a hall. In 1530, Hart Hall annexed Black Hall also. For some time, Cat Hall was leased by All Souls College, and then by Exeter College, until it also was subsumed into the growing Hart Hall early in the 16th century, giving the hall most of the land around what is today its Old Quadrangle.

Magdalen Hall and the second Hertford College

Magdalen Hall was founded around 1490 on a site to the west of Magdalen College and next to Magdalen's grammar school. The site is now Magdalen's St Swithun's quadrangle. It took the name of an earlier Magdalen Hall in the High Street, which was founded by William Waynflete in 1448 and then closed on the opening of Magdalen College in 1458. The first master of the grammar school was appointed in 1480, and its original school building was erected in 1486. However, as the hall took independent students as well as those belonging to the college, it quickly became an independent institution under its own principal.

The hall was known for its adherence to the teachings of John Wycliffe; William Tyndale, translator of the English Bible and martyr, studied there. Another famous student of the hall was the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who came up in either 1601 or 1602. At the English Civil War, Magdalen Hall was known as a Puritan hall under the principalship of Henry Wilkinson. Famous Puritan graduates include Philip Nye, key adviser to Oliver Cromwell on matters of religion and regulation of the Church. The hall rarely used a badge of arms, but, when it did, it used the same arms as the college.

At the time of the demise of the first Hertford College, Magdalen College had long been searching for a way of expelling Magdalen Hall in order to expand into its buildings. Before the demise of Hertford, Magdalen College conspired to make its site ready to receive a transplanted Magdalen Hall. The current Lodge of Hertford College thus still bears the arms of Magdalen Hall (and so also of Magdalen College) beside those of Hertford College (and Hart Hall) and the university.

John Macbride became both principal of Magdalen Hall and Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic in 1813, and plans to move the hall to the site of Hertford College were already afoot. On 15 March 1815, Magdalen College submitted a proposal for the move to Convocation. Magdalen College proposed to repair the Hertford buildings and defray the expense of Magdalen Hall's move to the site, while the hall were to relinquish claim to their own buildings to Magdalen College. An Act of Parliament was passed supporting the plan, but no move was made until a fire accidentally started by an undergraduate on 9 January 1820 destroyed almost half of Magdalen Hall's buildings. Not long after this, one of Hertford College's buildings on Catte Street, so flimsy that it was known as the 'paper building', collapsed. With this motivation, the new foundation stone of Magdalen Hall was laid at the new site on 3 May 1820, and the hall's migration was complete by 1822. The Catte Street frontage was pulled down and rebuilt, and several buildings had an extra storey added to them. Magdalen Hall expanded to fill the space, and became the largest hall by far, numbering 214 members in 1846. Macbride and his vice-principals were active in building up the refounded Magdalen Hall. To distance the hall from its namesake college, Macbride attempted to change the name to 'Magdalene Hall', but this change was never accepted. Macbride served as principal for 54 years, until his death in 1868. The Macbride Sermon, one of the University Sermons, is preached each Hilary term in the Chapel of Hertford College in his memory.

Buildings

Hertford College's main site is situated on Catte Street, New College Lane and Holywell Street. The site consists of three quadrangles: Old Quadrangle, New Quadrangle, and Holywell Quadrangle. The college also has three large groups of buildings for student accommodation near Folly Bridge: Warnock House, the Graduate Centre and Abingdon House. In addition to these, the college owns a number of houses around Oxford.

Old Quadrangle

The Old Quadrangle (known as Old Quad or OB Quad, for Old Buildings) is, as the name suggests, the oldest and the original quadrangle. Its entrance is the through the Gatehouse on Catte Street, directly opposite the main gates of the Bodleian Library. The Gatehouse is a late 19th-century building by Thomas Graham Jackson, bearing the image of a drinking hart above the archway. However, the wooden doors with their colourful floral decoration are the gates of Hart Hall from the 17th century. The Gatehouse houses the Lodge.

Through the Gatehouse, the quadrangle is laid out around a pleasant lawn with a few decorative trees. The lawn is off-limits during Michaelmas and Hilary terms but is accessible during Trinity term for sitting on (at any time) and croquet (on Fridays and Sundays only).

In the north-east corner of the quad is the Old Hall, the oldest remaining buildings of Hart Hall, dating from the 1570s. The Old Hall and its adjoining Buttery are now in regular use for dining, especially by the Fellows. Running southwards, along the eastern side of the quad, is a 17th-century building, with oriel windows tucked away on its southern end. Originally, the portion closest to the Old Hall was student accommodation, and the southern portion was the principal's lodgings. Today the building is mostly taken over by the Senior Common Room, with the northern ground-floor room being the Old Library. In the south-east corner is the 18th-century Cottage, the only one of the planned four 'angles' of Dr Newton that was ever built. Originally, this occupied the entire corner, around to what was the chapel (and is now the library). Its southern side was demolished to make way for Jackson's Chapel.

The southern side of the quad consists of the Chapel, built in 1908 by Jackson, which has a particularly good acoustic. Its ante-chapel houses a stained-glass window depicting William Tyndale, made in 1911 for the British and Foreign Bible Society, and installed at Hertford in 1994. West of the Chapel is the Library, which was the previous chapel built in the 18th century by Newton. The Library possesses many fine, antique books, most of which belonged to the library of Magdalen Hall. Among these are many rare 17th-century manuscripts and an original edition of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan given as a personal gift to the college: Hobbes prepared this work while at Magdalen Hall.

The western side of the quad has the Gatehouse, with the Lodge, in its centre. On either side of this are slightly earlier buildings, the southern of which is the Principal's Lodgings, and the northern mostly houses the college's offices. In addition, the north-west building has access onto the Bridge of Sighs. Above the Gatehouse is the dining Hall, which is wood-panelled and hung with a number of college portraits. The hall is reached from the quad by a distinctive stone spiral staircase designed by Jackson, and inspired by the spiral staircase at the Château de Blois.

New Quadrangle

The New Quadrangle (known as New Quad or NB Quad, for New Buildings) is connected to the Old Quadrangle, across New College Lane, by the Bridge of Sighs, which was designed by Thomas Graham Jackson. The north-western corner of New Quad is taken up by the Indian Institute building, which is not part of Hertford College. Most of the New Buildings are early 20th-century designs by Jackson, except the slightly later frontage onto Holywell Street by T. H. Hughes, on the northern side of the quad. The quad is entered through a gate onto Catte Street, just opposite the Clarendon Building. New Quad is mostly used for undergraduate accommodation.

The most significant building in the quad is the Octagon, just north of the gate on Catte Street, which houses the Middle Common Room. It is the 16th-century Chapel of St Mary the Virgin at Smithgate, which formed a bastion in the town walls. An original carving of the scene of the Annunciation can be seen from Catte Street, just beside the gate.

Holywell Quadrangle

Holywell Quadrangle backs directly onto New Quad, and the two are connected by an arched corridor that also contains the steps down to Hertford's subterranean bar. Holywell Quad was built in 1975, and is almost exclusively for first-year undergraduate housing. Its main features are a gate onto Holywell Street, the Junior Common Room in the south-east corner, and the Baring Room (named after Thomas Charles Baring, the college's major benefactor) which is a multi-purpose hall at the top of the southern staircase.

Student life

Undergraduate students are accommodated for the full three or four years of their study, either on the main site or on college-owned property primarily in North Oxford and the Folly Bridge area. A new Hertford Graduate Centre fronting the Isis was built near Folly Bridge and was opened in 2000.

Hertford is home to a college cat named Simpkin, who lives in the College Lodge and is the fourth of his lineage, collectively Simpkins, the collective noun for Hertford College cats; the original was called Simpkin and was introduced by the former college principal Geoffrey Warnock, named after the cat in the Beatrix Potter novel The Tailor of Gloucester. He is provided with a bursary by alumni to cover his food and veterinary treatment.

Academic selection

Hertford has one of the lowest admission rates in Oxbridge.

Academic achievement

Hertford's exam results are slightly above average. In the Norrington Table of results over the period 2006–2012 it has come 17th, 9th, 18th, 6th, 12th, 5th and 23rd.

Sport

Hertford College Boat Club is among the leading Oxford college boat clubs: both its women's and men's first boats are in the first division of Torpids and Eights Week, with both M1 and W1 winning "blades" in the 2015 edition of Torpids. The boats and club room are in the Longbridges boathouse on the Isis. With the transition of Magdalen Hall to Hertford College in 1874, the old blue-black of the hall stopped racing in 1873, and the new red-white of the college took to the river in 1875. Within only seven years of its refoundation, the college came Head of the River in the annual college boat races, in 1881. On achieving that victory, the crew carried their boat all the way back to the college and burnt it just inside the gates. The college archives possess a letter detailing the club's celebrations from the sub-librarian of the Bodleian Library, who spent the night on the scaffolding surrounding the work on the Old Schools Tower, directly opposite the Hertford gate, in case the fire spread to the library. In 2005, the boathouse was gutted by an arson attack carried out by the Animal Liberation Front, in protest against animal testing at the university. The new boathouse was rebuilt on the same site.

The college was endowed with a new gym in 2011 and has playing fields in New Marston, which include a pavilion with facilities for most major team sports. In August 2013 Hertford College Rugby Club became the first team from the UK to tour Mongolia in official partnership with the Mongolian Rugby Football Union. They played matches against The Mongolia Defense University and the Ulaan Baatar Warriors. Both matches were played in the national stadium and broadcast live on Mongolian national television. In 2017, the team returned to Mongolia, this time playing two matches against the Ulaanbaatar Warriors.

Music

Hertford College has the largest and most active music society of any Oxford college, drawing in musicians from around the university, with ensembles including the Hertford College Orchestra, the Hertford College Chapel Choir, the Hertford College Wind Band, the Hertford College Jazz Band and the Hertford College Bruckner Orchestra.

There are two competitive organ scholarships. The Chapel's fine acoustic lends itself to concerts and recitals, and it is frequently used for recording.

People associated with the college

Principals

The most recent permanent Principal of the college, from 2020 until November 2024, was former UK Ambassador to Lebanon and foreign policy advisor Tom Fletcher. Professor Patrick Roche is the current interim Principal.

Selected current Professorial and Tutorial Fellows

The college has over 30 Tutorial Fellows in the subjects it offers at undergraduate level.

Hagan Bayley, Professor of Chemical Biology

Charlotte Brewer, Professor of English Language and Literature, Tutor in English

Dame Kay Davies, FRS, Dr Lee's Professor of Anatomy

Martin C. J. Maiden, Professor of Molecular Epidemiology, Tutor in Biology

Ian McBride, Foster Professor of Irish History

Peter Millican, Gilbert Ryle Fellow, Professor and Tutor in Philosophy

Christopher J. Schofield, Professor of Organic Chemistry

Emma J. Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Tutor in English

David Ian Stuart, Professor of Structural Biology

David Thomas, Professor of Geography

Claire Vallance, Professor of Physical Chemistry, Tutor in Chemistry

Michael Wooldridge, Professor of Computer Science

Alison Woollard, Associate Professor in Genetics, Tutor in Biochemistry

Emeritus Fellows

The college has a number of Emeritus Fellows, including:

Toby Barnard, historian

Martin Biddle, archaeologist

Robin Devenish, former professor and Tutor in Physics

Fionn Dunne, former Dean and Fellow in Engineering

Bill MacMillan, former Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Senior Tutor

Tom Paulin, former G M Young Lecturer and Tutor in English

Christopher Tyerman, former Professor of History of the Crusades and Tutor in History

Alison Young, former Professor of Public Law

Former Emeritus and Emerita Fellows include Rebecca Sitsapesan, Anthony Cockshut, E. M. Vaughan Williams, R. W. Guillery, Philip Randle, Felix Markham, C. A. J. Armstrong, Jean Gottmann and Julia Briggs. Briggs was the college's first woman fellow, in 1978.

Honorary Fellows

John Baring, 7th Baron Ashburton

Walter Bodmer, former principal

Martin Bridson, mathematician

Nancee Oku Bright, documentary filmmaker, director and producer

Sherard Cowper-Coles

John Dewar, former Tutor in Law

Richard W. Fisher, ambassador

R. F. Foster, historian

Andrew Goudie, Master of St Cross College

Charlotte Hogg, economist

Will Hutton, economist and former Principal

The Very Reverend Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans

Sir Jeffrey Jowell QC, barrister

Soweto Kinch, jazz musician and rapper

John Landers, former principal

Paul Manduca, chairman of Prudential plc (2012-2020)

The Rt. Rev. Thomas McMahon, Catholic Bishop of Brentwood

Paul Muldoon, President of the Poetry Society

David Pannick, Baron Pannick

Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland

Jacqui Smith, former Home Secretary