On test server
college garden seat
path to the Doll Building
entrance to the observatory
Doll Building
Skiron the north west wind
Boreas the north wind
Kaikias the north east wind
Apeliotes the south east wind
Freud from the Observatory
blot on the Jericho landscape
spoilt view of the Rotunda
common room window
Green Templeton gardens
Green Templeton lawn
view of the Doll Building
observatory common room
college common room
students' lounge
students' common room
globalism doesn't work
Blavatnik spoils the view
a conurbation of carbuncles
grim view from the Observatory
Green Templeton garden
old Observatory stables
summer eights 2015
2017 Summer Eights
Japanese student
Lankester Quad
hospital turned university
hospital donation slot
Oxford Oratory
St Aloysius?
St Aloysius Church
St Joseph?
British Army best
Christian Science Reading Room
St Benet's Chapel
St Benet's lawn
back of St John Street
St Benet's vine
St Benet's terrace
2015 Summer Eights
St Benet's refectory
elegant room at St Benet's
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"The eighteenth-century Radcliffe Observatory dominates the three-acre College site. The building functioned as an observatory from 1773 until the previous owners (the Radcliffe Trustees) decided to sell it in 1934 and to erect a new observatory in Pretoria, South Africa, where the less polluted atmosphere would be suitable for the study of the southern hemisphere.
The purchaser of the Observatory was Lord Nuffield, who presented it to the hospital authorities and in 1936 established the Nuffield Institute for Medical Research there. In 1979 the Institute moved to new premises in the grounds of the John Radcliffe Hospital, thus freeing the Observatory site for its new owner, Green College.
The Observatory was built at the suggestion of Dr Thomas Hornsby, the Savilian Professor of Astronomy, after he had used a room in the nearby Radcliffe Infirmary to observe the transit of Venus across the sun's disc in 1769. The transit was a notable event which helped to produce greatly improved measurements for nautical navigation.
Beneath the Tower itself are rooms at each of three levels: the ground floor is now the College dining room, the first floor, originally the library, is now used as the Common Room, and on the top floor is the magnificent octagonal observing room.
Now bereft of its instruments, the room nevertheless still contains some of the original furniture as well as a spiral staircase which leads to an upper gallery. From this gallery the Observer had access to the roof where meteorological observations were carried out. Large windows lead from the observing room onto the balcony, making it possible to wheel observing instruments outdoors."
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