Morse Country

While in Stratford, we took a side trip to Oxford, home to the 44 colleges and religious schools that together constitute Oxford University.  The University controls the library and some administrative functions, but the individual colleges function autonomously.  It is a system that is very strange to Americans, as I don't think that we have anything that is similar.  Perhaps our university system of having several graduate and undergraduate "schools" approaches the English university system. Most US universities exert much more authority over their different schools, which are strictly organized by discipline.  I find the English system a bit confusing. 

Every student must live in college housing, and apparently, the type of student life available at each college helps students to choose where to study (oh, and the courses, of course).  Even though these colleges have huge, grand, appropriately academic-looking buildings, they have very small student bodies, averaging 200-800 students.

The oldest of the colleges were begun in the mid-13th century; the newest began in 1990!  I doubt that the newbie (Kellogg College) has quite the cache of University College, 1249.

Many, but not all, of the colleges are open to the public for a fee.  People can go in and walk around the quadrangle, go into the dining hall, etc.  For Harry Potter fans, there were tour maps and guides to the dining hall and other places filmed at the colleges here.  All of the colleges had some type of gate, this one happened to be rather nice.

On the weekend that we were in Oxford, there was an international literary conference going on at the Bodleian Library, so the library was closed to visitors.  It was a rather impressive building.  I was standing in the center of the courtyard; the building went around all four sides and then had additional wings.

And, across the street from this entrance to the Bodleian was The Bridge of Sighs! No, we're not in Venice, merely a copy.

While Oxford is first and foremost a "college town", it is also a tourist town and there were lots of places to eat.  Our choice was the church crypt at St. Mary the Virgin.

I am still baffled by the idea of crypts being above ground.  Isn't there some rule of thumb that says a crypt is underground?

After lunch we went to Ashmolean Museum, where the two most interesting things were these strings, including this Strad, ca. 1750-something, with gorgeous inlay work:

and this painting by Frederick Leighton:

I love his schmaltzy pre-Raphaelite art -- all flowy Grecian looking robes and strawberry blonde ringlets.

And, finally, for Morse fans, on our way out of the city, the pub where so many Oxford murders were sorted out over a pint.

Occupying equal rack space with the walking guides for Harry Potter trails, were the various editions, some with DVDs, of Morse guides.  For those of you not familiar with Endeavour Morse, he was the title character of a British crime drama shown on PBS for several seasons, based on the Inspector Morse books by Colin Dexter. This was the only site that we visited and as much as he really wanted to, Larry did not buy the guide.