New College history

The Wartime Use of the Founder’s Library 1939–1946

Christopher — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 14:00:02 +0000

The Wartime Use of the Founder’s Library 1939–1946

Michael Stansfield

Issue number

(2025): 23

Notes category

Mansfield College, Oxford

What role during the Second World War did the space at New College, known as the Founder’s Library, play in the national cause, the life of the college more generally, and the provision of library services for the members of New College itself and—which might especially be the intrigue—of its neighbour Mansfield College?

Plan of Mansfield’s library in the Founder’s Library space [detail]
Mansfield College Archives, Oxford

© Courtesy of Mansfield College Library, Oxford

23NCN10 (2025) Stansfield on Wartime Use.pdf573.43 KB

Supporting the War Effort: The Convalescent Hospital at New College during the First World War

Christopher — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 13:58:52 +0000

Supporting the War Effort: The Convalescent Hospital at New College during the First World War

William Shire

Issue number

(2025): 23

Notes category

Magdalen College, Oxford

Throughout the First World War, the gardens of New College, Oxford were transformed from their usual calm greenery into a sea of tents and bustling activity—becoming a convalescent hospital designed to support the work of the Third Southern General Hospital in Oxford, which had its headquarters in the Examination Schools. Sources held primarily in the archives of New College can reveal the role played by the hospital at New College within the hospital system in Oxford during the conflict, and its development over time as the war progressed.

Photograph of Mabel Wace and ten soldiers in the grounds of New College, 1915
Magdalen College Archives, Oxford, P/408/P2/27

Magdalen College Archives, Oxford

23NCN9 (2025) Shire on Convalescent Hospital.pdf1.23 MB

‘So that the Fellows of our College may persevere to be of one mind inwardly and to be more closely united in mutual charity . . .’: The Annual Liveries of Fellows and Scholars of Medieval New College

Christopher — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 13:47:31 +0000

‘So that the Fellows of our College may persevere to be of one mind inwardly and to be more closely united in mutual charity . . .’: The Annual Liveries of Fellows and Scholars of Medieval New College

Timothy Hallett

Issue number

(2025): 23

Notes category

New College, Oxford, possesses some of the most extensive and detailed accounts of any medieval collegiate foundation in Oxford and Cambridge. Amongst the 58 account rolls made by early wardens or bursars between 1376 and 1529 we find regular allocations of cloth, and sometimes furs, given as annual livery to the academic �鶹app established by William of Wykeham. Medieval accounts can be used in combination with the founder’s statutes and surviving pictorial evidence to gain insight into the reasoning behind academic livery, the vendors who supplied cloth and furs, costs and quantities of cloth and furs, the design and colours of academic livery, plus rules on the attire which was also prohibited to members of the college.

The college porter ejects a youth, in distinctly unclerical garb, who is not a member of the college.
New College Archives, Oxford, NCA 3584

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

23NCN2 (2025) Hallett on Liveries.pdf1.02 MB

The Staircase to Nowhere and its Greek Inscription

Christopher — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 20:37:47 +0000

The Staircase to Nowhere and its Greek Inscription

Stephen Anderson

Issue number

(2024): 21

Notes category

Deep in the bowels of the new Gradel buildings is the so-called basement hub, a circular area from which doors, corridors and stairways go off in all directions to different parts of the development. One notable feature here, added more for the sake of symmetry of design than for any other reason, is the ‘Staircase to Nowhere’, a set of seven or so steps which do no more than go up to a small semi-circular area on which some natural light is shed from a window far above.

Staircase (top), Gradel Quadrangles, New College, Oxford

New College, Oxford

21NCN10 (2024) Anderson on Greek Inscription.pdf605.36 KB

New College Examination Results in the Nineteenth Century: From ‘Uninspiring Indolence’ to ‘Academic Preeminence’

Christopher — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 18:15:52 +0000

New College Examination Results in the Nineteenth Century: From ‘Uninspiring Indolence’ to ‘Academic Preeminence’

Dennis A. Ahlburg

Issue number

(2024): 21

Notes category

The fellows and students of New College, Oxford moved on from drinking, gaming, and brutish pleasures to academic success, or learned to balance them much better than in the early centuries of the college’s history. The 19th century opened with the college’s being an academic irrelevancy and closed with its being an academic powerhouse which it is to this day.

Joseph Nash, New College Hall (1858), watercolour on paper

New College, Oxford

21NCN5 (2024) Ahlburg on Examination Results.pdf173.44 KB

Amicabilis Concordia 1444–2024

Christopher — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 16:48:12 +0000

Amicabilis Concordia 1444–2024

Michael Stansfield

Issue number

(2024): 21

Notes category

Archives

Amicabilis Concordia

New College history

King's College, Cambridge

Winchester College

Eton College

The Amicabilis Concordia, or friendship agreement, is a document renowned these days for the evensongs occasionally held in its name by four colleges dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary; that is New College, Oxford, King’s College, Cambridge, Eton College, and Winchester College. The Concordia was sealed on 1 July 1444 as a quadripartite indenture.

The signed and beribboned menu for dinner after the King’s College versus New College football 1924 [detail]
New College Archives, Oxford, NCA JCR/R/Mallett/4b

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

21NCN1 (2024) Stansfield on Amicabilis Concordia.pdf659.63 KB

New College MCR: The 60th Anniversary

Christopher — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 01:27:28 +0000

New College MCR: The 60th Anniversary

Michael Stansfield

Issue number

(2023): 20

Notes category

On Tuesday, 7 March 2023, New College’s Middle Common Room (MCR) celebrated the 60th anniversary of its establishment with an exhibition of significant items from the archives in the Conduit Room, a reception in the Founder’s Library, the distribution of appropriate stash (including some rather natty appropriately branded scarves), speeches from the Warden and the President Emily Jin, and dinner in Hall. The anniversary was worth celebrating because, as in so many areas, New College had rather led the way in recognising and providing for what is now a major and vital part of its �鶹app whose genesis is worth exploring.

Plan of the site between Longwall Street and the city wall that became the Sacher Building [detail]
New College Archives, Oxford, NCA BUR/BCF/205

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

20NCN9 (2023) Stansfield on MCR.pdf344.56 KB

The Acquisition of Alton Barnes as a New College Estate in 1385

Christopher — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 19:52:41 +0000

The Acquisition of Alton Barnes as a New College Estate in 1385

Michael Stansfield

Issue number

(2023): 20

Notes category

The manors of Alton Barnes with Shaw and Alton Priors, now the civil parish of Alton, are in the Vale of Pewsey on the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire. Alton Priors only came into New College’s purview relatively recently, in 1912. Alton Barnes with Shaw, on the other hand, has had a much longer association with the college, being one of the first estates to be provided by the Founder for his new foundation in Oxford when it became part of the college’s endowment in 1385. As with many of the college’s estates, the New College archive is rich with documents recording both the process of it becoming part of that endowment, and also something of the back story of its existence before then.

The earl of Salisbury’s counterseal, used by William Montagu (1328–1397), 2nd earl of Salisbury
New College Archives, Oxford, NCA 10039 [detail]

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

20NCN3 (2023) Stansfield on Alton Barnes.pdf405.67 KB

‘Ancient virtue and manly spirits’: The New College Men Who Fell in the Second Boer War

Christopher — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 14:36:46 +0000

‘Ancient virtue and manly spirits’: The New College Men Who Fell in the Second Boer War

Jason Morgan

Issue number

(2023): 19

Notes category

Boer War

Second Boer War

New College history

William Brian Lancelot Alt

Percy Frederick Brassey

Douglas Hamilton McLean

Douglas Marriott

George Ralston Peddie Waddell

George Edward Stevenson Salt

Richard Bassett Wilson

Located on the south wall of the cloisters of New College, Oxford is a bronze commemorative plaque ‘sacred to the memory of seven former members of this house’. Who were these seven men, who fell during the fighting in the Second Boer War?

New College Archives, Oxford, NCA JCR/Q1/1

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

19NCN8 (2023) Morgan on the Second Boer War.pdf1.36 MB

Some Benefactors and their Heraldry

Christopher — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 14:21:40 +0000

Some Benefactors and their Heraldry

Patric Dickinson

Issue number

(2023): 19

Notes category

It is a commonplace that many of the coats of arms on display in Oxford colleges commemorate past benefactors. New College is no exception, and in fact is particularly rich in heraldry that celebrates those who have contributed to its material wellbeing. This has been the case throughout its history, but the purpose of this Note is to take a look at some of the armorial additions that have been made to its fabric since the mid-19th century.

New College Archives, Oxford, NCA 2429

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

19NCN7 (2023) Dickinson on Benefactors and Heraldry.pdf1.62 MB