A Day in Oxford

   I’ve talked about how much I love the omnipresence of history in London.  Now let’s talk about the living history of Oxford!  Many of the places we see as visitors to London we go to with the goal of seeing—please excuse my ineloquence—something old.  They are destinations with the purpose of teaching and showing historic events and places.  Basically this means those of us with maps in our back pockets and cameras around our necks shuffle past artifacts that are housed behind glass while reading plaques or listening to tour guides.  While I’m reluctant to play this part, I do enjoy the trips we’re taking in this class and find the artifacts and facts behind them fascinating.  But Oxford is a working piece of history. 

The ceiling of the room directly beneath the Bodleian Library

  Today we went to the city of Oxford and toured several amazing places.  First, the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.  This is, of course, of particular interest to me and everyone in the group because we are all in the process of getting our Masters in Library and Information Science.  The Bodleian Library dates from 1602 (though it assimilated an earlier form of the library) and the building it is housed in dates back to the early 12^th century.  The buildings of Oxford University are impressive in themselves, the story of how this early library came about is amazing to learn, but my favorite part was that it is a working library.  You have to have certain permissions to enter and use the books, of course, but as we were being taken on a tour (no pictures allowed, unfortunately) students and scholars were using the reading rooms and going in and out.  Can you imagine being such a part of that history?!

  [I apologize for the excessive use of exclamation points in the following section;

it was a pretty exciting place.]

   Then we were off to the Story Museum.  Oh my goodness.  This is an absolutely brilliant project which does mostly visits to schools to promote literacy and oral storytelling traditions, and they have plans for their unfinished museum which are fantastic.  Right now the museum is partly done, but there are a couple exhibits that are roughly done and they are absolutely amazing.

   In the first you follow the tale of the creation of the “Storyloom” which was a machine that ran off of children’s imagination.  The made up story was clever, silly, delightful, and claimed that the Storyloom is responsible for the creation of the Alice in Wonderland series.  Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Dodgson) went to school at Christ Church and lived in Oxford when he wrote his famous tales.  Other famous authors from Oxford are J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Philip Pullman (who our guide casually mentioned she was friends with!!!).  Anyway, back to the Story Museum.  After going through the delightfully decorated story path and reading the tale you could draw pictures or write about what inspired you to write (I added “What if . . .?” to the wall).  What fun to be a part of this place for future visitors to see!  The next exhibit showed the artwork of artists around the world depicting scenes from Alice in Wonderland.  And at the end of this was a "tea room" with . . . well it really can’t be appreciated with just words.  Take a look!

There is mulch on the floor, and a hat attached to each seat!

Fun, right?  Check out the FSU Multimedia 2012 Facebook page for a group shot of the class sitting down to tea.  This was really a wonderful place, and my goal is to someday visit again when it is finished.  The best part was that this wasn’t just a place where you slowly walked around and admired things on display (which I enjoyed doing today, too, at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology), but it’s a center of imaginative learning and interactive fun!

   Finally, we made our way to Christ Church.  Now, I know “church” is part of the name but this is actually a school.  This is so because (as we learned today) the church was the educational system in medieval times. Young men were sent to be educated by the clergy, and many of the churches (especially in Oxford) eventually turned into what we today call universities.  This also means that there are fantastically designed cathedrals within the schools.

Some of you Harry Potter fans might recognize the name Christ Church as the filming location for some of the scenes from the movies.  For example, the great hall.

    Incredibly huge and impressive.  But, again, this is an active university.  Many, many tourists go through here daily, but the great hall is sometimes closed because  it is in use by the students who eat their meals there.  This kind of connection with hundreds of years of tradition astonishes me.  Can you imagine eating, walking, learning, living in an institution that was founded in the 1500s?!  Clearly this made an impact on me, and I love Oxford for the example it sets of living in history.

And here's an example to show that the center of London has its moments, too.