So. My plan today was simple. Drop off some laundry, take a tour of the Bodleian Library, get a look inside the Sheldonian Theatre, see the exhibit of Bodleian treasures at the Weston Library, grab some lunch, and spend the rest of the day wandering through the Ashmolean Museum before picking up my laundry and returning to the hotel.
This mostly worked out, with one minor hiccup I’ll get to.
I got the laundry dropped off and an assurance it would be ready this evening. That was a load off my mind, though it was also somewhat expensive. They know when they’ve got you over a barrel, don’t they? Still, I needed clean pants, so there ya go.
After that, I walked back to the Bodleian Library1 and bought a ticket for the hour-long tour.
While I waited for the tour to start, I grabbed a couple more pictures.
This is a statue of William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke. He was a patron of Shakespeare, and the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays is dedicated to him. He may or may not be the Mr. W. H. that the sonnets are dedicated to. He was a bit of a scandalous character in Elizabeth’s court, but was a generous and bookish man, who gave a whole bunch of books to the library. Note the stylish armour; that’s about as close as Herbert ever got to a battlefield.This is the tower topping the main entrance of the Old Schools Quadrangle, the main court of the Bodleian. It’s called the Tower of the Five Orders, because the columns on each level are from different orders of classical architecture. I had hoped for a cooler explanation, to be honest.
The tour was fascinating, but a little unsatisfying. Because the Bodleian is a working library, and exams are coming on, we had to be very quiet and careful to stay out of everyone’s way. Also, except for the School of Divinity, we weren’t allowed to take photographs.
This is the School of Divinity. It used to be used for the Oral Disputation, the Latin debate that served as final examinations. These days, it’s mainly used as the robing room for graduates before they cross over into the Sheldonian Theatre. Also, the ballroom dancing class scene from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was filmed in here. I’m standing about where Prof. McGonnagall stood to lead the class.In here with a slot for donations, sits Thomas Bodley’s black iron strongbox. The lid is open and, as you can see, the underside is a complex set of levers, rods, springs, and plates. These are the rather elaborate locks that were used to secure the chest.The ceiling of the hall is elaborately decorated with over 450 bosses, showing the coats of arms and initials of various patrons and important people in Oxford in the late 17th century when the ceiling was finished. This is just one section.
The tour even took us inside the Radcliff Camera, that I’ve talked about previously. What I didn’t know was that, originally, the ground floor of the Camera was open to the air, with open arches, providing a small sheltered area that was used for public gatherings, small markets, etc. The arches were closed up in the 18th century, when the library started needing more room for storage.
The Weston Library, where I went next, is hosting an exhibit called Marks of Genius. They are displaying a number of books, documents, and artifacts from the Bodleian’s collection. These were all available for photography, and I might have gone a little nuts in there. Here’s is a limited selection of my pictures.
The Magna Carta.A map of the world according to the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century.John James Audobon’s Birds of North America. Four volumes in its special case. The pages are about four feet wide.An ivory plaque from the court of Charlemagne, circa 800. It’s set in an 18th century binding that covers the original Carolingian manuscript.The Ashmole Bestiary, showing the two-page spread where it talks about the phoenix.Another bestiary, showing an elephant on the right and a gryphon killing a horse on the left.A painting of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his sister Mary Shelley. The watch was Percy’s and the locket contained a lock of Mary’s hair.Remember that I said the First Folio was dedicated to William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke? Well, here’s the First Folio. They seem to have cleaned off the marks I made pressing my face against the glass. Stories that I was licking the case are filthy, filthy lies. Probably.
After that, I walked back across the street to the Sheldonian Theatre. This is another building shared by all the colleges, and it’s used mainly for matriculation and graduation ceremonies.
The ceiling is pretty awesome, being a multi-panel painting of Truth descending from the clouds to ennoble the various subjects taught in Oxford, and drive out the various evils of ignorance. I couldn’t get that good a picture.
The cupola of the Sheldonian gives a nice panoramic view of the city. Unfortunately, the windows are about five feet off the ground, which limits the view somewhat.
But here’s the view south, showing the spires and towers of the Bodleian and the dome of the Radcliff Camera behind. Just beside that is the spire of St. Mary’s.
I grabbed a sandwich and a drink, then, and walked down to the Ashmolean, where I sat on a bench and ate my lunch before going in.
Which is when I learned that the Ashmolean is closed on Mondays.
By this time, I was tired, and my knees were twinging, so I decided to take an afternoon off2 and rest up. Besides, I had The Imitation Game on my computer, and really wanted to see it after my tour of Bletchley Park yesterday. Quick review – fun movie, but the history of everything was… simplified. An interesting starting point for learning about Bletchley Park, but shouldn’t be the only source.
And then I went and picked up my laundry and some dinner.
Tomorrow, I’m off to York. Oxford was great, and I could spend another couple of days here, but I’m starting to think that’s going to be the same at each of my stops.
Guess I’ll have to come back.
I should specify that this is the Old Bodleian Library. There was a New Bodleian Library, but it was renamed the Weston Library. People still refer to the old Bodleian Library as the Old Bodleian Library. I dunno. [↩]
I say take an afternoon off, but this was like 3:00. So, take part of an afternoon off. [↩]
One of the big things I wanted to do on this trip is visit the Bletchley Park Museum. It’s pretty much holy ground for computer nerds, WWII geeks, conspiracy theorists, secret history aficionados, and1 information security specialists. I fall into a couple of those categories, so this was a bit of a pilgrimage for me.
For those who don’t know, here’s the brief on Bletchley Park. In the early days of WWII, the British military set up a signals intercept and codebreaking unit at Bletchley Park. They brought together a varied group of geniuses, trained a bunch of technicians2, and started trying to break the German codes. They were very successful, shortening the war by an estimated two years, ensuring the surprise of the D-Day attack, and helping to find and sink the Bismarck. Along the way, they pretty much laid the foundations for modern computing.
And then, when the war was over, the whole operation was silently shut down. All the papers were destroyed, all the machines dismantled and dispersed, and all the people sworn to secrecy. Until the project went public in 1974, there was pretty much no leak about the existence and work done at Bletchley Park. Churchill called Bletchley Park, “the geese that laid the golden eggs and never cackled.”
About the only other single project that had this sort of impact on the course of WWII is the Manhattan Project.
Anyway.
The travel instructions I got for the park – gleaned from some Internet site I can no longer find – weren’t good. They landed me in Milton Keynes with the impression that the museum was an easy walk from the train station. It wasn’t. It was a fifteen-minute cab ride away. Not ideal, but easy enough.
And then I wandered in the footsteps of the greats.
These are what it was all about. You’ve got an Enigma machine on the left, a much simpler Italian cipher machine on the right, and some pads above. The bottom shelf holds the much more complex Lorenz cipher machine.This is a Bombe. It’s an electromechanical device that was used to test potential settings for the Enigma machines. This Bombe could test 36 different settings at once. Note that this, like pretty much all the other machines here is a reconstruction, because the original machines had been dismantled after the war. This was actually made as a prop for The Imitation Game.Once they had the day’s settings for Enigma, those would be set up on this Typex machine. Enigma messages could then be typed on the Typex, which would output the deciphered message.These days, the grounds of Bletchley Park are lovely. During wartime operations, though, most of the clear ground was covered by huts and tents.The mansion started as the centre of decoding efforts. The group grew quickly, and began working out of cottages on the grounds. Those quickly proved inadequate to the personnel, and the army started building huts. Towards the end of the war, they’d added a larger, more modern, more permanent set of structures, a set of alphabetically labeled blocks.One of the administration offices in the mansion. Of course, this is a reproduction of what it would have looked like.And this is a reconstruction of Alan Turing’s desk in Hut 8.
If I had come here next month, there would have been a couple more exhibits ready, including a look at a reconstructed Bombe, with demonstrations of how it worked. Also, an exhibit of how the various codebreakers worked to break the codes.
One thing that was of real interest to me3 is that the whole focus of the initial codebreaking efforts under Dilly Knox was on what he called the least secure part of the cipher: the people using it. People were lazy, and used easy-to-remember key settings on their devices – the names of their girlfriends, rude words, etc. These things gave the Bletchley Park codebreakers their first fingerholds on Enigma.
Interesting to me is the fact that the museum is doing a great deal to make sure that Bletchley Park is placed in the context of the entire war. Here, in front of the mansion, is a sculpture of a landmine victim.Just before Poland fell to Germany, Polish Intelligence shipped a whole bunch of their work, information, and materials to Bletchley Park. This gave the British a real leg up in their efforts, and is commemorated in this memorial.And this memorial to those who worked at Bletchley Park was dedicated by Her Majesty just four years ago. The code wheels spell out WE ALSO SERVED.
The museum had an awesome multi-media self-guided tour device – essentially an iPod Touch loaded with a keyed multi-media presentation. It provided a lot of good info, along with ways to drill down for more information in the areas where there’s more interest. Overall, the entire Bletchley Park Museum was awesome, in the truest sense of that word – I am in awe of the things I learned.
The trip home was easier, because I had figured out where the Bletchley train station was. Just in case you cared.
Now, I’m going to bed. Tomorrow’s my last day in Oxford. Got a few places I want to see, and I also want to get some laundry done.
This morning, I went on the Oxford walking tour I had booked. The day was a little overcast, and windy, and cool, but that’s okay. There were also a lot of people in the Oxford gowns, along with well-dressed family members, roving the streets, which made me think there was a graduation ceremony in the offing1. Nothing wrong with that, of course, except that it meant some places were off-limits to us tourists.
But we set off as folks gathered, and saw some very cool things.
Okay. These heads, on the fence surrounding the Sheldonian Theatre, are called the Philosophers. That said, no one seems really sure who or what they represent: philosophers, emperors, the disciples, or what. The fact that they have kind of slack-jawed, gormless expressions, the sarcastic title of Philosophers seems to have stuck. One guide suggested they were models for various styles of ancient Greek scholarly beards.This is a side view of the Sheldonian Theatre. It’s where most of the big ceremonies – like graduations – are held. You can see the rope lines set up to keep the students in line. It was designed by Christopher Wren while he was studying Astronomy at Oxford, and is apparently a masterpiece of criss-crossing beams supporting the ceiling, rather than using columns.This formidable place is the gate of New College, which was the first college designed in a deliberately fortified nature, and with an eye to economy of placement of facilities within. I found it very interesting for two main reasons: first, Archibald Spooner, who gave the English language the word “spoonerism,” was Warden here once upon a time. Second, it’s a beautiful illustration of how the colleges are each little self-contained worlds. This is the outside……and this is the inside. The college quad is large, open, and beautiful. Past the quad, though the archway at the back……is the cloister. One of the scenes in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was shot here.It’s the scene where Draco Malfoy is mocking Harry from up in the tree, and then gets turned into a ferret by Mad-Eye Moody. This is an ilex, an evergreen oak variety. It’s not used to the cooler climate here in Oxford, and so has leached all the nutrients from the soil around it, leaving a large dead space.Also within the imposing walls of New College is a beautiful garden. I don’t know what’s up those stairs – visitors are not allowed on the grass. I don’t blame them, but I am curious.
The stark contrast between the forbidding exteriors of the colleges and the sumptuous, well-groomed interiors really struck me. More than most universities I’ve seen, it was a profound delineation between the closed, pampered collegiate life, and the rougher, more earthly life in the real world.
Not that I consider academic life to necessarily be the ivory tower that this sort of display makes me think of. It’s more that, looking at this, I understand where that sort of idea comes from.
Anyway. We left New College, and headed back to a couple of other stops. The crowds prevented some of the pictures I took to be much good.
This is the Radcliff Camera. It was built by a disciple of Christopher Wren, and presents a couple of tributes to him. First of all, the dome is a replica (much smaller, of course) of the dome of St. Paul’s in London, which was designed by Wren. Second, the circumference is identical to the circumference of Stonehenge, which was first scientifically measured and mapped by Christopher Wren.This is inside the square of the old Bodleian Library. It’s a huge square, designed based on biblical accounts of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.Surrounding the inner square of the Bodleian are these doors, each labeled with the subject that used to be stored in that area.
After the tour, I stuck my head in a couple of pubs, looking to find some lunch, but they were all packed solid with graduation celebrants. So, I wandered down the street to the Natural History Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Honestly, I wasn’t too interested in the Natural History Museum, but you need to go through it to get to the Pitt Rivers Museum. Still, there were some cool things in the Natural History Museum. For example:
An iguanodon skeleton.A t-rex skeleton. This one looms really nicely.Lots and lots of other skeletons.
Through the back of the gallery is the Pitt Rivers Museum.
This is not like a modern museum. It’s arranged like the Victorian-era museum it actually is. What does that mean? It means that it’s full of whatever caught the attention of the founder, arranged in categories that are not necessarily scientific or even useful.For example, there’s a section of animal figures in art.Another section of metal locks and keys.A set of Haida totem poles.Some skulls that had been taken as trophies by those who slew them in battle.Hairpins from all over the world and throughout history.
But this was the thing that totally blew my mind and convinced me of the basic surrealism of the world.
Shields from New Guinea tribesmen painted with the image of the comic book character the Phantom.
So, here’s how those came about. Apparently, the hill tribes of the interior of Papua New Guinea made these big war shields. They painted them with images of ancestors and helpful spirits, binding the power of those things to aid them in war. When they started running into Europeans armed with firearms, the shields turned out to be less than useful in combat.
But they got their hands on some Phantom comic books. The idea of the Phantom – The Man Who Cannot Die, The Ghost Who Walks – as a defender of a native people against pirates and other exploiters resonated with them. They started to paint the Phantom on their shields to invoke his power, though they became items of ritual and ceremony rather than war against the Europeans.
That just made my day.
After that, I managed to have lunch in The King’s Arms, a pub that may2 have hosted the first performance of Hamlet outside of London. Shakespeare himself, while he was with The King’s Men, may have drunk there when he was in Oxford, which was not uncommon.
It was a good chicken and bacon pie, and a nice pint of cider.
Then I wandered a bit, feeling a little tired, and found the Oxford Martyrs’ Monument.
This is the monument to the bishops and archbishop who were burned at the stake, and the other martyrs to religious war in Oxford.
I was tired, then, and saw that I was right near a movie theatre, so I went and saw Avengers: The Age of Ultron again. Then, back to the hotel to do up this long post and plan for tomorrow.
I’m planning to head out to Milton Keynes tomorrow and see the Bletchley Park museum. Just as well, because apparently there’s a fun run going on in Oxford tomorrow, and it’ll shut down a few things. Then, on Monday, I’m going to hit the rest of the things I want to see here.
Oxford is awesome.
Turns out there were at least two: one for Trinity College, and one for Wadham College. [↩]
Left London this morning, taking the train up to Oxford. I’m glad I splurged for the first-class train pass; the seats are very nice, the tables are great, and there are power outlets everywhere. The trip to Oxford is under an hour, but the trip to York will be longer, and then York to Oban, Oban to Edinburgh, and Edinburgh back to London are quite long trips. The extra perks will really tell on those legs.
I got to Oxford around 12:30 PM – everything fell into place on the trip, with me getting to the tube just in time for the train to Paddington, and then got to Paddington just in time for the train to Oxford. That was nice, but it meant that, by the time I walked to the hotel on Broad Street, I was starving, as I hadn’t eaten yet.
After checking in, I unloaded my bags in my room, and went for a wander to find some lunch. Hunger being what it was, I didn’t look too far before stumbling upon a Burger King. Not a traditional English meal, but man, it was just what I needed then.
Then I took a stroll around the shopping district, just looking at stuff. At around 5:00 PM, I went back to my room to rest and read before the Ghost Walk tour. About a half-hour before the tour, I walked across the street to the start point.
This is Broad Street, where I’m staying. You can see the rounded front of the Sheldonian Theatre, and the buildings seem to glow int he setting sun. It’s very pretty.Just behind where I’m standing in the previous picture is Trinity College. This is a peak at the grounds through the locked gate.
There were only four of us on the Ghost Walk tour1, which is the minimum number for the walk to run. It started raining part way through2, so I didn’t get a lot of pictures.
This is the site where the Oxford Martyrs – Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, along with Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer – were burned at the stake. This was at the order of Bloody Mary, Queen after Henry VIII, who went a little nutso about returning England to Catholicism.The Bridge of Sighs is much more recent than the surrounding buildings – completed in 1914. It had nothing to do with the Ghost Walk, but it is a cool and recognizable city landmark.
Tom, our guide, was a great storyteller, and told some interesting stories. One that surprised me was the tale of the St. Scholastica Day riots – where the townies and the students went to war against each other, resulting in 30 dead townspeople and 63 dead students.
My favourite story, though, is about Cuthbert Shields. Now, I can find no record of this tale on the Internet, but that’s why I go on these trips, right? To hear the weird history that doesn’t get reported elsewhere.
Anyway, Shields was an historian at Corpus Christi College. He had previously been known as Robert Laing, but changed his name after his behaviour3 landed him in an asylum, and then forced him to spend many years traveling the world. He came back to Oxford around 1888 or so, and stayed there until he died in 1908.
He left behind a strange bequest to the college: a sealed silver box with a ribbon tied around it, and instructions that it not be opened until 50 years after his death. The college honoured his wishes and, in 1958, the librarian, assistant librarian, and warden of the college opened the box.
Inside were scores of Nostradamus-like predictions, carefully arranged and written, chronicling the years since his death.
They were all dead wrong.
The story goes that the Shields’s ghost attended the opening and seemed very disappointed.
Anyway, that’s my first glimpse of Oxford. Another walking tour tomorrow, where I’ll get to see more of the colleges and stuff.
Things have been kind of quiet here as I’ve slowly been booking stuff for my trip. Now that I’ve got a significant portion of it fleshed out, I’ve updated the itinerary page, and am writing this post so the few people who follow the blog1 can see where things stand.
Now, on the trip, London and Edinburgh were pretty much no-brainers. I wanted to start with London2, and finish up with Edinburgh, winding my way north over the three weeks of my trip. I had originally intended to take in some stuff in Cornwall, but the research I did showed me that it would be pretty time-consuming and expensive, taking me well out of the way, and leaving me less time for a lot of other things.
Side note: the UK is significantly more expensive than Ireland. Like, 50-100% more expensive, at least for accommodations. I thought things would get cheaper outside of London, but that did not turn out to be the case. I’m paying for as much of the accommodations and tours as I can before the trip, so that I don’t need to worry about that part of the trip ON the trip. It’ll give me time to pay off the expense before the actual trip.
Anyway, the days between London and Edinburgh. I kind of wanted to see Oxford – it’s full of neat history3, amazing architecture, and is centrally located so that I can take a couple of day trips to interesting places like Bletchley Park and Stratford-upon-Avon. Maybe even Blenheim Palace.
A little more research convinced me that the next stage of the journey should be York. Again, a lot of very cool history and architecture4. I don’t have a lot of solid ideas of what I want to see there, yet – I need to do some more research. But I’m convinced that a few days there will be well-spent.
Now, the next stop is a little more problematic. I really want to see Fingal’s Cave, which is off the west coast of Scotland. It’s off the beaten path, and it’ll take me pretty much a whole day to get from York to Oban5. Then, the actual boat tour may not land on Staffa6 if the weather is not co-operative. So, I may be taking two days to go out of my way to see something that I may not, in fact, get to see. Sounds a little like my abortive attempt to see the Skelligs, doesn’t it?
But I really want to try and see Fingal’s Cave, and I’ve got a couple of days to spend. I figure it’s worth a try.
And from Oban, it looks like another full day of travel to bring me to Edinburgh. And from Edinburgh7, I take the train down to spend my last night in a hotel near Heathrow before flying home the next day.
I’ve booked a few tours, etc. already. Here’s what’s officially on the books:
The Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London. This is free, but you need to register in advance to be allowed to see it. I’ve got my certificate of entry, so I’m good!
I’m staying in Whitechapel while in London, so of course I need to take a Jack the Ripper tour. I’ve found one that looks pretty good and booked it.
I also booked a tour that takes me to Stonehenge, Bath, and Lacock. It’s a bit of a pricey tour, because it gets me8 a private viewing of Stonehenge at sunrise. Inside the inner ring of stones. I’m sure Bath and Lacock are cool and all, but INSIDE STONEHENGE!
I found that one of my favourite performers, Derren Brown, has a new show that will be playing in Edinburgh while I’m there. The morning the tickets went on sale, I went online and snagged on in the front centre of the stalls. I’m very excited about this!
There are a number of other things I want to see and do, but haven’t finalized yet9:
Avebury. There’s a massive stone circle and a long tomb there. It looks easy enough to get there from London on the train and bus. I should be able to pair it with the next item for a full day trip.
Salisbury. Lots of cool history here, including Salisbury Cathedral with it’s Magna Carta.
Shakespeare’s Globe. If they’ve got a Shakespearean production on, I pretty much need to get a ticket.
Bletchley Park. WWII codebreaking museum! Looks to be an easy day trip out from Oxford. And very, very cool to see.
Stratford-upon-Avon. This is all about the Shakespeare, of course. Another easy day trip from Oxford. Maybe I can even combine it with Bletchley Park into one full day.
Rosslyn Chapel. Okay. I’m gonna go all conspiracy hipster. I thought Rosslyn Chapel was weird and interesting long before Dan Brown got his mucky fingerprints all over it and Da Vinci Coded it up. So, I’m gonna take the bus out from Edinburgh to see it. Maybe I can even find a tour that will take in the chapel and some other interesting sites in Scotland.
The Highlands. I think it’ll be fun to take a bus tour for the day through the Scottish Highlands. Why wouldn’t I? If it stops at Loch Ness, bonus!
So. Many. CASTLES! They’re everywhere! And I wanna see them all.
Ghost tours. No, I’m not credulous enough to think I’m going to see a ghost10, but you get such cool stories and hidden history on the tours!
There’s probably other stuff. I’ve got more than six months to keep planning and researching. It’ll flesh out.
