St John's College, Oxford
Historic college whose second quadrangle was opened to a king and queen in a day of feasting.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to St John's College in Oxford turns on one day in August sixteen thirty-six, when King Charles the First and his Queen came to see a new quadrangle owed to William Laud, the college's former president and now Archbishop of Canterbury. It follows the song on the stairs, the dinner that followed, and the cook whose work Laud thought worth recording. Best heard just inside the vaulted passage into Canterbury Quad.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Wadham College
Seventeenth-century college on a former friary site, its quad framed by a carved royal frontispiece.
Oriel College
Royal-founded college with a Jacobean quad, fan-vaulted gate and statues of kings over the hall porch.
Trinity College
Tudor-era college on the site of a medieval monastic college, with old quadrangles and gardens.
Corpus Christi College
Tudor college with a humanist founding, a twenty-seven-dial pelican sundial and garden beehives.
Exeter College
Fourteenth-century college whose Victorian chapel was modelled on the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.
The Queen's College
Medieval college behind a Baroque screen and cupola, still calling its members to dinner by trumpet.