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Hertford College, Oxford

 
Hertford College, Oxford

 
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Hertford College, Oxford
 
 
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Hertford College is one of the constituent colleges
Colleges of the University of Oxford

The University of Oxford comprises 38 Colleges and 6 religious Permanent Private Halls , which are autonomous self-governing corporations within the university....
 of the University of Oxford
University of Oxford

The University of Oxford , located in the city of Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation in the English-speaking world....
 in England
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
. It is located in Catte Street, directly opposite the main entrance of the original Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest library in Europe, and in England is second in size only to the British Library....
. As of 2006, the college had a financial endowment
Financial endowment

A financial endowment is a transfer of money or property donated to an institution, usually with the stipulation that it be invested, and the :wikt:principal remain intact in perpetuity or for a defined time period....
 of £52m.

college was originally founded as Hart Hall in 1282 by Elias de Hertford on Catte Street. In medieval Oxford, halls were primarily lodging houses for students and resident tutors, and thus did not have the same status as fully fledged colleges.






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Hertford College is one of the constituent colleges
Colleges of the University of Oxford

The University of Oxford comprises 38 Colleges and 6 religious Permanent Private Halls , which are autonomous self-governing corporations within the university....
 of the University of Oxford
University of Oxford

The University of Oxford , located in the city of Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation in the English-speaking world....
 in England
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
. It is located in Catte Street, directly opposite the main entrance of the original Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest library in Europe, and in England is second in size only to the British Library....
. As of 2006, the college had a financial endowment
Financial endowment

A financial endowment is a transfer of money or property donated to an institution, usually with the stipulation that it be invested, and the :wikt:principal remain intact in perpetuity or for a defined time period....
 of £52m.

History

The college was originally founded as Hart Hall in 1282 by Elias de Hertford on Catte Street. In medieval Oxford, halls were primarily lodging houses for students and resident tutors, and thus did not have the same status as fully fledged colleges. Many of the great minds of the English Renaissance studied at what would eventually become Hertford College including the metaphysical poet John Donne
John Donne

John Donne was an England Literature in English#Jacobean literature poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysical poets of the period....
, satirist Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satire, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, Dublin....
, the political theorist Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosophy, remembered today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory....
, and the first translator of the Bible into English, William Tyndale
William Tyndale

William Tyndale was a 16th-century Protestant reformer and scholar who, influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther, translated the Bible into the Early Modern English of his day....
. What had begun as a residential site subsequently grew during the following centuries. Some of the old architecture remains, including the main door (embossed with floral detail), dating from the seventeenth century, and the Old Library, with a collection of fine books that date from the same period.

The Hall became Hertford College in 1740. Due to funding problems, the College's buildings were taken over as Magdalen Hall (not related to the similarly named Magdalen College
Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College redirects here, see also Magdalene College, CambridgeMagdalen College is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford of the University of Oxford in England....
 whose separate Hall had been incorporated into the University as a college years before)1 in 1822. In 1874, the combined Hertford College/Magdalen Hall was finally re-established once again as a full college, largely due to the sponsorship of Sir Thomas Baring. Within only seven years, the college came Head of the River
Head of the River

A Head of the River race is a rowing race, held as a procession race against the clock, with the winning crew receiving the title of "Head of the River"....
 in the annual college boat races.

Hertford was one of the first fifteen co-educational colleges in the university. It has an almost equal gender balance with a slightly higher proportion of women to men. Traditionally seen as a progressive college, in the 1960s Hertford was one of the first colleges to encourage applicants from state schools, and has a higher proportion of students from state schools relative to private schools.

More recently the college has benefited from its firm financial footing. With an aggressive buying policy, its library collection has become one of the largest amongst the colleges and contains over 40,000 volumes. Among these are many rare seventeenth century manuscripts and an original edition of Hobbes' Leviathan
Leviathan (book)

Leviathan, The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, commonly called Leviathan, is a book written by Thomas Hobbes which was published in 1651....
 given as a personal gift to the college where he prepared his best-known work. Students are accommodated for the full three years either on the main site or on college-owned property primarily in North Oxford and the Folly Bridge area. A new Hertford Graduate Centre fronting the Thames has also been built near Folly Bridge and was opened in 2000. The college playing fields include a pavilion with facilities for most major team sports; its shared boathouse
Hertford College Boat Club

Hertford College Boat Club is a Sport rowing club for members of Hertford College, Oxford. It is based in the Longbridges boathouse on the Isis , which is owned by the college and shared with St Hilda's College, Oxford , St Catherine's College, Oxford, Green Templeton College, Oxford and Mansfield College, Oxford....
 has been recently rebuilt, and the college has a new student gym. Despite its reputation for a relaxed atmosphere Hertford has featured well in exam results, often finishing among the top five university-wide. In 2007, the college ranked 9th in the Norrington Table
Norrington Table

The Norrington Table is an annual ranking that lists the Colleges of the University of Oxfords of the University of Oxford that have undergraduate students in order of the performance of their undergraduate students on that year's final examinations....
 of results.

Hertford is home to a 'college cat' named Simpkins, who lives in the College Lodge and is the ninth of his lineage to bear that name.

The College site

Hertfordcollegeoxford20040124copyrightkaihsutai
The main college consists of three quadrangles: Old Quadrangle, New Quadrangle, and Holywell Quadrangle. The Old Quadrangle (Old quad, OB [old building] quad for short), as the name suggests, is the oldest and the original quadrangle. It incorporates the lodge, library, chapel, hall, bursary and other administrative buildings. It is also home to many of the studies of senior fellows and tutors. Old quad is the only Hertford quadrangle to have a lawn in the centre, in the traditional college style. The lawn is off-limits during Michaelmas and Hilary terms but is accessible during Trinity term for sitting on (at any time) and croquet (on Fridays and Sundays only). Senior fellows of the college are granted the privilege of being able to walk across the lawn all year round.

The New Quadrangle (New Quad or NB quad for short) is connected to the Old Quadrangle via the famous Hertford Bridge, also known as the Bridge of Sighs
Bridge of Sighs (Oxford)

Hertford Bridge, popularly known as the Bridge of Sighs, is a covered bridge over New College Lane in Oxford, England....
, which was designed by Thomas Graham Jackson
Thomas Graham Jackson

Sir Thomas Graham Jackson, 1st Baronet RA was one of the most distinguished England architects of his generation. He is best remembered for his work at Oxford for various colleges as well as the University of Oxford, notably: the Examination Schools, most of Hertford College, Oxford , much of Brasenose College, Oxford, a range at Trinity...
. New quad is primarily composed of undergraduate housing and associated facilities. With views of the Sheldonian Theatre
Sheldonian Theatre

The Sheldonian Theatre, located in Oxford, England, was built from 1664 to 1668 after a design by Christopher Wren for the University of Oxford....
, the MCR (Middle Common Room) "Octagon" incorporates part of a sixteenth-century chapel built into the old city wall. It is also situated in New quad and is off limits to all undergraduates except those enrolled as mature students or in their fourth year as an undergraduate.

Holywell Quadrangle backs directly onto New quad, and the two are connected by an arched corridor that also contains the steps down to Hertford's subterranean bar. Holywell is almost exclusively first-year undergraduate housing and therefore contains the JCR (Junior Common Room). The Baring Room occupies the highest level of one of five staircases in Holywell and is named after the benefactor whose funding aided Hertford's classificatory transition from a hall of residence to a fully fledged college.

Fellows of the College


  • Roy Foster
    R. F. Foster (historian)

    Robert Fitzroy Foster - generally known as Roy Foster - is the Carroll Professor of History of Ireland at Hertford College, Oxford in the United Kingdom....
    , Carroll Professor of Irish History
  • Dame Kay Davies
    Kay Davies

    Dame Kay Elizabeth Davies, Order of the British Empire, Royal Society is a United Kingdom human geneticist born on 1 April 1951. She is Dr Lee's Professor of Anatomy in the University of Oxford and a fellow of Hertford College....
     FRS, Dr Lee's Professor of Anatomy
  • Emma J. Smith
    Emma J. Smith

    Emma J. Smith is a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. She has published widely on Shakespeare and on other early modern dramatists, and has recently completed The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare....
    , Tutor
    Tutor

    In British, Australian, New Zealand, Italian, and some Canadian university, a tutor is often but not always a postgraduate student or a lecturer assigned to conduct a seminar for undergraduate students, often known as a tutorial....
     in English and Senior Tutor
  • Tom Paulin
    Tom Paulin

    Thomas Neilson Paulin is a Northern Ireland poet and critic of film, music and literature. He lives in England, where he is the GM Young Lecturer in English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford....
    , G M Young Lecturer and Tutor in English
  • Professor R C E Devenish, Tutor in Physics


Emeritus Fellows


  • Peter Baker
  • Gerry McCrum
  • Roger Van Noorden
  • Alan Day


Honorary Fellows


  • John Francis Harcourt Baring Ashburton
    John Baring, 7th Baron Ashburton

    John Francis Harcourt Baring, 7th Baron Ashburton, Order of the Garter, Royal Victorian Order, Deputy Lieutenant is a United Kingdom merchant banker and former chairman of BP ....
  • Ian Brownlie
    Ian Brownlie

    Ian Brownlie, CBE, QC, British Academy, is a UK jurist, specialising in international law. He was called to the Bar in 1958 .During his academic career he taught at the University of Leeds, the University of Nottingham, and Wadham College, Oxford....
  • Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles
    Sherard Cowper-Coles

    Sir 'Sherard Louis Cowper-Coles' KCMG LVO is a United Kingdom diplomat, since 2007 ambassador to Afghanistan. His surname is pronounced 'Cooper-Coles'....
  • Ambassador Richard W. Fisher
  • Mrs Drue Heinz
    Drue Heinz

    Drue Heinz, born Doreen Mary English, is a prominent patron of the literary arts in the United States.She is the publisher of the famous literary magazine The Paris Review, which was started in 1953 by Peter Matthiessen, Thomas H....
  • Professor Paul Langford
    Paul Langford

    Professor Paul Langford is a United Kingdom historian and Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.Educated at Monmouth School and Hertford College, Oxford, he was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship in modern history at Lincoln College in 1969, becoming a tutorial fellow in 1970....
  • Thomas McMahon
    Thomas McMahon (bishop)

    Bishop Thomas McMahon is the current Bishop of Brentwood....
  • Paul Muldoon
    Paul Muldoon

    Paul Muldoon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry from County Armagh, Northern Ireland as well as an educator and academic at Princeton University....
  • David Pannick
    David Pannick

    David Philip Pannick, Baron Pannick Queen's Counsel is a leading barrister in the United Kingdom, and crossbencher in the House of Lords. He practises mainly in the areas of public law and human rights....
  • Mary Robinson
    Mary Robinson

    Mary Therese Winifred Robinson served as the President_of_Ireland#List_of_Presidents_of_Ireland, and first female, President of Ireland, serving from 1990 to 1997, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1997 to 2002....
  • David Waddington
    David Waddington, Baron Waddington

    David Charles Waddington, Baron Waddington Royal Victorian Order Deputy Lieutenant Queen's Counsel Privy Council of the United Kingdom is a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom....
  • Baroness Mary Warnock
  • General Sir Roger Neil Wheeler
  • Professor Tobias Wolff
    Tobias Wolff

    Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff is an United States author.He is best known for his short stories and his memoirs, although he has written two novels ....
  • Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman
    Erik Christopher Zeeman

    Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman Fellow of the Royal Society , is a Japanese-born United Kingdom mathematician known for his work in geometric topology and singularity theory....


Notable former students

  • Richard Addinsell
    Richard Addinsell

    Richard Stewart Addinsell was a British people composer, best known for film music, primarily his Warsaw Concerto, composed for the film Dangerous Moonlight ....
  • Philip Hernandez
  • Bernard Ashmole
    Bernard Ashmole

    Bernard Ashmole, Order of the British Empire was a British archaeologist and art historian , who specialized in ancient Greek sculpture. He was Professor of Classical Archaeology, University of London, 1929-1948....
  • John Clifford Valentine Behan
    John Clifford Valentine Behan

    Sir John Clifford Valentine Behan was the second warden of the Trinity College of the University of Melbourne, and the first Victoria Rhodes Scholarship....
  • Marian Bell
    Marian Bell

    Marian Bell is a United Kingdom economist, and was a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee from June 2002 to June 2005.She was educated at Hertford College, Oxford and Birkbeck, University of London....
  • Catherine Bennett
    Catherine Bennett (journalist)

    Catherine Bennett is a United Kingdom journalist working for The Guardian and The Observer, where she writes columns on politics and culture. She was educated at Hertford College, Oxford....
  • Saint Alexander Briant
    Alexander Briant

    Saint Alexander Briant , was an English people Jesuit and martyr, executed at Tyburn.He was born in Somerset, and entered Hart Hall, Oxford , at an early age....
    , Roman Catholic martyr
  • Alex Bristow
  • Fiona Bruce
    Fiona Bruce

    Fiona Elizabeth Bruce is a Scottish people journalist, Newsreader and television presenter. Since joining the BBC in 1989, she has gone on to present many flagship programmes for the corporation including the BBC News at Ten, Crimewatch, Call My Bluff and, most recently, Antiques Roadshow and Andrew Marr Sunday Show....
  • Nick Cohen
    Nick Cohen

    Nick Cohen is a United Kingdom journalist, author, and political commentator. He was educated at Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics....
    , political journalist
  • Calvin Cheng
    Calvin Cheng

    Calvin Ern-Lee Cheng is a leading figure in the fashion modelling industry in Asia.Cheng is a graduate of the University of Oxford , where he earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and a Master of Science in Management....
    , Asian modelling mogul
  • William Robinson Clark
    William Robinson Clark

    William Robinson Clark Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada was a Scottish-Canadian theologian. He was born in Daviot, Aberdeenshire. After graduating from King's College, Aberdeen Master of Arts with honours, he went to Hertford College, Oxford....
  • Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles
    Sherard Cowper-Coles

    Sir 'Sherard Louis Cowper-Coles' KCMG LVO is a United Kingdom diplomat, since 2007 ambassador to Afghanistan. His surname is pronounced 'Cooper-Coles'....
  • George Dangerfield
    George Dangerfield

    George Dangerfield was a journalist, an author, and the literary editor of Vanity Fair from 1933 to 1935.Dangerfield was born in Newbury, Berkshire in England and educated at Forest School , Walthamstow ....
  • Samuel Daniel
    Samuel Daniel

    Samuel Daniel was an England English poetry and History of England....
  • David Dilks
    David Dilks

    David N. Dilks, PhD, FRHistS, FRSL, is a British historian and emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Leeds. He was born in Coventry, foleshill in 1938 and attended RGS Worcester before winning a scholarship to Hertford College, Oxford to read History....
  • John Donne
    John Donne

    John Donne was an England Literature in English#Jacobean literature poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysical poets of the period....
  • John Meade Falkner
    J. Meade Falkner

    John Meade Falkner was an England novelist and poet, best known for his 1898 novel, Moonfleet. An extremely successful businessman as well, he became chairman of the arms manufacturer Armstrong Whitworth during World War I....
  • Adam Fleming
    Adam Fleming

    Adam Fleming is a Scottish news reporter, best known for his work on CBBC's news programme, Newsround. He also reports for Sportsround and has recently begun appearing as a political correspondent for BBC News ....
    , children's television presenter
  • Charles James Fox
    Charles James Fox

    Charles James Fox was a prominent Kingdom of Great Britain British Whig Party statesman whose parliamentary career spanned thirty-eight years of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century and who was particularly noted for being the arch-rival of William Pitt the Younger....
  • Krishnan Guru-Murthy
    Krishnan Guru-Murthy

    Krishnan Guru-Murthy is a United Kingdom television news presenter and journalist, currently employed by Channel 4. He is currently the main anchor for Channel 4 News, alongside Jon Snow....
  • Gideon Henderson
    Gideon Henderson

    Professor Gideon Mark Henderson is a UK geochemist. His work focuses on low temperature geochemistry, and on improving the understanding of the mechanisms driving climate change....
  • Nicholas Henderson
    Nicholas Henderson

    Sir John Nicholas Henderson GCMG, Royal Victorian Order is a retired British career diplomat and writer who served as British ambassador to the United States from 1979 to 1982....
  • John Coxe Hippisley
    John Coxe Hippisley

    Sir John Coxe Hippisley was a British diplomat and politician who pursued an ?unflagging, though wholly unsuccessful, quest for office? which led King George III of Great Britain to describe him as ?that busy man? and ?the grand intriguer?....
    , politician and diplomat.
  • Thomas Hobbes
    Thomas Hobbes

    Thomas Hobbes was an English philosophy, remembered today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory....
  • Leonard Hodgson
    Leonard Hodgson

    Leonard Hodgson was an Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, historian of the early Church and Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford from 1944 to 1958....
  • Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon
    Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon

    Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon was an England historian and statesman, and grandfather of two British monarchs, Mary II of England and Anne of Great Britain....
  • Clement Jackson
    Clement Jackson

    Clement Nugent Jackson was a British athlete, academic and athletics administrator....
    , founder of the Amateur Athletic Association
    Amateur Athletic Association

    The Amateur Athletic Association of England or AAA is the oldest national governing body for athletics in the world, having been established on 24 April 1880....
  • Jeffrey John
    Jeffrey John

    Jeffrey Philip Hywel John, Society of Catholic Priests, is a Church of England cleric and the current Dean of St Albans Cathedral. He made headlines in 2003 when he was the first person to have openly been in a gay relationship to be nominated as a Church of England bishop....
  • Natasha Kaplinsky
    Natasha Kaplinsky

    Natasha Margaret Kaplinsky is an England News presenter, currently employed by Channel Five....
    , newsreader
    News presenter

    A news presenter is, broadly speaking, a person that presents a news program on television, radio or the Internet. The term is not commonly used by people in the industry as they tend to use more descriptive - and sometimes country-specific - terms....
  • Soweto Kinch
    Soweto Kinch

    Soweto Kinch is a United Kingdom jazz Alto saxophone and rapping. He was born in London in 1978 to a Barbados father, who is a playwright, and British-Jamaican mother, who is an actress....
    , jazz musician
  • Jurek Martin
    Jurek Martin

    Jurek Martin is a United Kingdom-born journalist.Martin, a Financial Times journalism and former foreign editor and twiceWashington, D.C....
  • Gavin Maxwell
    Gavin Maxwell

    Gavin Maxwell Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, FIAL, Fellow of the Zoological Society of Scotland, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society was a Scotland natural history and author, best known for his work with European Otters....
  • Dom Mintoff
    Dom Mintoff

    Dom Mintoff was the leader of the Malta Labour Party from 1949 to 1984, Prime Minister of Malta from 1955 to 1958 and again, post-Independence, from 1971 to 1984....
    , former Prime Minister of Malta
  • Max Nicholson
  • Richard Norton-Taylor
    Richard Norton-Taylor

    Richard Norton Taylor is Security Affairs Editor of The Guardian. He was educated at Kings School, Canterbury and Hertford College, Oxford.Norton Taylor has written several plays based on transcripts of public inquiries including The Colour of Justice based on the hearing of the MacPherson inquiry on the Police conduct of the investi...
  • Peter Pears
    Peter Pears

    Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears was an England tenor and life-long partner of the composer Benjamin Britten.He was educated at Lancing College and went on to study music at Keble College, Oxford, serving as organist at Hertford College, Oxford, but left without taking his degree....
  • Henry Pelham
    Henry Pelham

    Henry Pelham was a Kingdom of Great Britain British Whig Party statesman, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 27 August 1743 until his death in 1754....
    , former British Prime Minister
  • Jacqui Smith
    Jacqui Smith

    Jacqueline Jill "Jacqui" Smith is a United Kingdom politician for the Labour Party . She is currently the Home Secretary and has been Member of Parliament for Redditch since United Kingdom general election, 1997....
    , current British Home Secretary
  • Jonathan Swift
    Jonathan Swift

    Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satire, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, Dublin....
  • William Tyndale
    William Tyndale

    William Tyndale was a 16th-century Protestant reformer and scholar who, influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther, translated the Bible into the Early Modern English of his day....
  • Ed Vulliamy
    Ed Vulliamy

    Ed Vulliamy is a British journalist and writer. His mother is the children's book illustrator Shirley Hughes. He was educated at the independent University College School and at Hertford College, University of Oxford before becoming a journalist....
  • Evelyn Waugh
    Evelyn Waugh

    Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was a United Kingdom writer, best known for such darkly humorous and Satire novels as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop , A Handful of Dust, and The Loved One, as well as for serious works, such as Brideshead Revisited and the Sword of Honour trilogy that clearly manifest his Catho...
  • Nathaniel Woodard
    Nathaniel Woodard

    Nathaniel Woodard was a priest in the Church of England. He founded 11 schools for the middle classes in England whose aim was to provide education based on sound principle and sound knowledge, firmly grounded in the Christian faith....
    , educationalist
  • Tobias Wolff
    Tobias Wolff

    Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff is an United States author.He is best known for his short stories and his memoirs, although he has written two novels ....
  • Byron White
    Byron White

    Byron "Whizzer" Raymond White won fame both as a football running back and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Appointed to the court by President John F....
See also :Category:Alumni of Hertford College, Oxford.


External links

  • - has large images
  • Main web site of College