However, the larger colleges' sites are of similar size to these areas. Iconic university buildings include the Sheldonian Theatre used for music concerts, lectures, and university ceremonies, and Examination Schools, where examinations and some lectures take place. The University Church of St Mary the Virgin was used for university ceremonies before the construction of the Sheldonian. Christ

The detective novel Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers, herself one of the first women to gain an academic degree from Oxford, takes place in a (fictional) women's college at Oxford, and the issue of women's education is central to its plot.
Buildings, collections, and facilities[edit]

Main sites[edit]


The atrium of the Chemistry Research Laboratory. The university has invested heavily in new facilities in recent years.
The University is a "city university" in that it does not have a main campus; instead, colleges, departments, accommodation, and other facilities are scattered throughout the city centre. The Science Area, in which most science departments are located, is the area that bears closest resemblance to a campus. The ten-acre Radcliffe Observatory Quarter in the northwest of the city is currently under development. However, the larger colleges' sites are of similar size to these areas.
Iconic university buildings include the Sheldonian Theatre used for music concerts, lectures, and university ceremonies, and Examination Schools, where examinations and some lectures take place. The University Church of St Mary the Virgin was used for university ceremonies before the construction of the Sheldonian. Christ Church Cathedral uniquely serves as both a college chapel and as a cathedral.
In 2012, the University embarked on the controversial one-hectare (400m × 25m) Castle Mill development of 4–5 storey blocks of student flats overlooking Cripley Meadow and the historic Port Meadow, blocking views of the spires in the city centre.[33] The development has been likened to building a "skyscraper beside Stonehenge".[34]
Libraries[edit]
See also: Category:Libraries of the University of Oxford


The Radcliffe Camera, built 1737–1749 as Oxford's science library, now holds books from the English, History, and Theology collections.
The University maintains the largest university library system in the UK;[35] and, with over 11 million volumes housed on 120 miles (190 km) of shelving, the Bodleian group is the second-largest library in the UK, after the British Library. The Bodleian is a legal deposit library, which means that it is entitled to request a free copy of every book published in the UK. As such, its collection is growing at a rate of over three miles (five kilometres) of shelving every year.[36]
The buildings referred to as the University's main research library, The Bodleian, consist of the original Bodleian Library in the Old Schools Quadrangle, founded by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1598 and opened in 1602,[37] the Radcliffe Camera, the Clarendon Building, and the New Bodleian Building. A tunnel underneath Broad Street connects these buildings, with the Gladstone Link connecting the Old Bodleian and Radcliffe Camera opening to readers in 2011.

rsity of Oxford is long and includes many who have made major contributions to British politics, the sciences, medicine, and literature. More than 40 Nobel laureates and more than 50 world leade

Brasenose Lane in the city centre, a street onto which three colleges back - Brasenose, Lincoln and Exeter.
Administrative reforms during the 19th century included the replacement of oral examinations with written entrance tests, greater tolerance for religious dissent, and the establishment of four women's colleges.[citation needed] 20th-century Privy Council decisions (e.g., the abolition of compulsory daily worship, dissociation of the Regius Professorship of Hebrew from clerical status, diversion of theological bequests to colleges to other purposes) loosened the link with traditional belief and practice.[citation needed] Furthermore, although the university's emphasis traditionally had been on classical knowledge, its curriculum expanded in the course of the 19th century to encompass scientific and medical studies.[citation needed] Knowledge of Ancient Greek was required for admission until 1920, and Latin until 1960.[citation needed]
The mid-20th century saw many distinguished continental scholars, displaced by Nazism and Communism, relocating to Oxford.
The list of distinguished scholars at the University of Oxford is long and includes many who have made major contributions to British politics, the sciences, medicine, and literature. More than 40 Nobel laureates and more than 50 world leaders have been affiliated with the University of Oxford.[20]
Women's education[edit]


Somerville College was founded as one of Oxford's first women's colleges in 1879, it is now fully co-educational.
The University passed a Statute in 1875 allowing its delegates to create examinations for women at roughly undergraduate level.[21] The first four women's colleges were established thanks to the activism of the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women (AEW). Lady Margaret Hall (1878)[22] was followed by Somerville College in 1879;[23] the first 21 students from Somerville and Lady Margaret Hall attended lectures in rooms above an Oxford baker's shop.[21] The first two colleges for women were followed by St Hugh's (1886),[24] St Hilda's (1893)[25] and St Anne's College (1952).[26] Oxford was long considered a bastion of male privilege,[27] and it was not until 7 October 1920 that women became eligible for admission as full members of the university and were given the right to take degrees.[28] In 1927 the University's dons created a quota[29] that limited the number of female students to a quarter that of men, a ruling which was not abolished until 1957.[21] However, before the 1970s all Oxford colleges were for men or women only, so that the number of women was effectively limited by the capacity of the women's colleges to admit students. It was not until 1959 that the women's colleges were given full collegiate status.
In 1974, Brasenose, Jesus, Wadham, Hertford and St Catherine's became the first previously all-male colleges to admit women.[30][31]
In 2008, the last single-sex college, St Hilda's, admitted its first men, meaning all colleges are now co-residential. By 1988, 40% of undergraduates at Oxford were female;[32] the ratio is now about 48:52 in men's favour.

rope, settling especially at the University of Douai. The method of teaching at Oxford was transformed from the medieval Scholastic method to Renaissance education, although institutions associated with the university suffered losses of land and revenues. In 1636, Chancellor William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, codified the university's statutes. These, to a large extent, remained

 Merton College thereby became the model for such establishments at Oxford, as well as at the University of Cambridge. Thereafter, an increasing number of students forsook living in halls and religious houses in favour of living in colleges.
In 1333–34, an attempt by some dissatisfied Oxford scholars to found a new university at Stamford, Lincolnshire was blocked by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge petitioning king Edward III.[14] Thereafter until the 1820s, no new universities were allowed to start in England, even in London; and, subsequently, Oxford and Cambridge had a duopoly unusual in western European countries.[15][16]
Renaissance period[edit]


Magdalen College - founded in the mid 15th century.
The new learning of the Renaissance greatly influenced Oxford from the late 15th century onwards. Among university scholars of the period were William Grocyn, who contributed to the revival of Greek language studies, and John Colet, the noted biblical scholar.
With the Reformation and the breaking of ties with the Roman Catholic Church, Recusant scholars from Oxford fled to continental Europe, settling especially at the University of Douai. The method of teaching at Oxford was transformed from the medieval Scholastic method to Renaissance education, although institutions associated with the university suffered losses of land and revenues.
In 1636, Chancellor William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, codified the university's statutes. These, to a large extent, remained its governing regulations until the mid-19th century. Laud was also responsible for the granting of a charter securing privileges for the University Press, and he made significant contributions to the Bodleian Library, the main library of the university. From the inception of the Church of England until 1866, membership of the church was a requirement to receive the B.A. degree from Oxford, and "dissenters" were only permitted to receive the M.A. in 1871.
The university was a centre of the Royalist party during the English Civil War (1642–1649), while the town favoured the opposing Parliamentarian cause. From the mid-18th century onwards, however, the University of Oxford took little part in political conflicts.
Modern period[edit]


An engraving of Christ Church, Oxford, 1742.
The mid-nineteenth century saw the impact of the Oxford Movement (1833–1845), led among others by the future Cardinal Newman. The influence of the reformed model of German university reached Oxford via key scholars such as Edward Bouverie Pusey, Benjamin Jowett and Max Müller.
The system of separate honour schools for different subjects began in 1802, with Mathematics and Literae Humaniores.[17] Schools for Natural Sciences and Law, and Modern History were added in 1853.[17] By 1872, the latter was split into Jurisprudence and Modern History; and, Theology became the sixth honour school.[18] In addition to these B.A. Honours degrees, the postgraduate Bachelor of Civil Law (B.C.L.) was, and still is, offered.[19]