Buildings of Jesus College, Oxford

Jesus College stands in central Oxford between Turl Street, Ship Street, Cornmarket Street and Market Street. Founded in 1571 by Elizabeth I at the request of Hugh Price, treasurer of St David’s Cathedral, it took over the buildings of White Hall, a former university hall that had fallen into disuse. Price added new structures before his death in 1574, and the first quadrangle with its hall, chapel and principal’s lodgings was completed between 1621 and 1630. Work on the second quadrangle began in the 1630s but was halted by the Civil War and finished around 1712. A third quadrangle was added in the 20th century with laboratories, a library and student rooms. Eleven parts of the college are listed buildings, four sides of the first and second quadrangles among them. Nine parts, including the chapel, hall and principal’s lodgings, have Grade I status for exceptional interest. The Fellows’ Library in the second quadrangle holds 11,000 antiquarian books and was restored in 2007. Architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner called the first quadrangle ‘small and pretty’ and praised the chapel reredos as ‘heavily gorgeous’. Poet Sir John Betjeman admired the clear planning of the first two quadrangles, though he found early 20th-century additions in the third quadrangle dull. Visitors enter through staircases numbered 1 to 21 across the three quadrangles. The oldest staircases 1 to 5 lead up to rooms in the first quadrangle, while staircases 6 to 13 serve the second. Stone steps replaced the wooden treads of staircase 3 in 1878, a style later copied on staircase 13 after a fire in 1882. The chapel, dedicated in 1621 and altered in 1864 by George Edmund Street, dominates the first quadrangle. The principal’s lodgings contain early 17th-century panelling, and the hall’s original hammerbeam roof lies hidden behind a 1741 plaster ceiling. The college still owns flats and a sports ground beyond the main site.