England Adventure: Allons-y!

It had to happen sometime, being in the epicenter of British culture. Its time for a Doctor Who themed blog! Be the author's companion as he travels back in time and visits some of the most ancient of British buildings and practices. And then travel with him to the famed Cardiff Bay as he takes on a BBC experience of a lifetime. Geronimo!

On a cheery Tuesday morning, well fed and eager, I made my way outside and onto a coach to travel the countryside with my class, British Culture and Society. Our lofty goal for the day was nothing short of spectacular: the ancient town and University of Oxford, England.

The city, originally called Oxenforda, was primarily as a spot for local people to cross their oxen over the River Thames. Hence Oxenforda, which literally translates from the early Saxon English of the ninth century to the "Ford of the Oxen".

Oxford has long since grown to become a renown center of education, attracting its first University college in the early 1100's, and has from then since built 37 more college in the area.

When walking in, it immediately feels like stepping both back in time, and up several socio-economic class ranks. The center where many of the worlds political leaders are educated, it become very easy to see why.

Inspiration for the movie sets of Harry Potter came from many of the ancient Gothic style buildings.

Oxford University, well renown the world over, is comprised of 38 separate colleges. Each college is responsible for housing and lodging their approximate five to seven hundreds students. Each college, usually taking up an entire city block, features slightly different architecture, as the tastes changed over the ~900 years of history. Nonetheless, there are a number of features that are common to all of the colleges.

The first is a strong gate house:

Back several hundred years, the only gender allowed access to University was males. Young males. And as young men are prone to fights, especially after a drink or two, the colleges needed a way to protect themselves and their non-trouble causing students, as police were few are far between.

The second key feature of any college are the large quadrangles, which are the large green spaces inside the courtyards. These are for social gatherings, eating, and other similar activities.

You cannot tell from the picture, but right behind the camera, there is a rehearsal for a Shakespeare play being put on.

Beyond that, every college still provides its own dining hall, and its own chapel. A now optional staple of the colleges were the fantastic libraries that sprawled throughout the halls. With the advent of more modern technology and furthered care in protecting ancient texts, many colleges have consolidated their texts under one of the Universities many ancient libraries.

The center of the University. This used to be the home of the college of medicine. Today, two floors under our feet, the remains of a gigantic library can still be found.

Oxford was, and in many ways still is, funded by wealthy alumni and other entities. One of these individuals was very interested in collecting books, and even went so far as to build an underground library underneath the entire town, two floors deep. This impressive amount of room was not nearly enough according to our tour guide, as Oxford receives a single copy of almost any and every book, journal, magazine, sheet music, and more. So much so that today a grand total of 55 hundred new works are added to the great library daily. Needless to say, they have long since run out of room within the town, and have had to purchase a large area of land out in the country to maintain their collection. They estimate about 200 years before that is full.

But, of course, there is more to the ancient city of Oxford than dusty old textbooks! It is also home to some of the greatest authors of fictional work ever, (in my own opinion), as well as the filming location of parts of the Harry Potter series.

Above is the entrance to the Great Hall in Harry Potter.

This room, the great hall of the Christ Church College, was the inspiration for the Great Hall in Harry Potter.

Inside these beautiful windows is the Restricted Section in Hogwarts Library. Also filmed here was the Hospital Wing from Socerer's Stone.

Finally, in Oxford, there is a really interesting tension between the people who live there. The two sides, the Town - comprised of the store owners and year round citizens, and the Gown - the Fellows of the University and the students who go there. Given the absolute approval by the Kings and Queens of England, the Gown have often been seen by the Town as both arrogant and parasitic people. Additionally, the University owns the majority of the land within Oxford, to whom the Town must pay taxes. During the Black Plague, the only entity rich enough to grab the quickly vacating land was the University, after all.

But perhaps most terrible was a three day fight between the two groups in the 1300's, after a bar incident got out of hand. In the end nearly 40 Towns and 130 Gowns were dead - and of course the King blamed the Town for the event.

In any event, there is essentially nothing that is not owned or operated by the University. A quick glance around the town will turn up not a single policeman or woman. Instead, there is the University ran police force. These are called the Bulldogs.

A Bulldog. Be afraid.

These bowler hat wearing, smug and entitled young individuals make up the "elite" of the college. They are also the University's own police force, and are tasked with the safety of the college and its denizens. Personally, I cannot but help of either the Bowler Hat guy from Meet the Robinsons, or perhaps even more ludicrously, Cornelius Fudge from the Harry Potter series.

And finally, on our trip to Oxford, we came across a few haunts of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The most important would be their pub, where they would meet up and discuss their stories.

An interesting note: the inspiration for the ending of the Lord or the Rings came from this pub: an eagle snatching away a childlike figure...

***

And of course, the Muggle Madness class could not leave the week without a massive trip of their own. And to another country, no less!

The very next day, Wednesday, we were up and at-em again to head off to Wales, the western country of the larger of the British Isles. As such, we slept most of the way there...

And when we awoke, we were overcome by a plague the like of which I have never seen before...

Shortly after some of our class shuddered their way out of their Orinthophobia, we turned our eyes from the skies and towards the beautiful gem of Cardiff Bay: