Hertford College

Hertford College stands in central Oxford on Catte Street, facing the Bodleian Library’s main gate. Two quadrangles, the Old and the New, sit side by side and are joined by the Bridge of Sighs, one of Oxford’s best-known landmarks. The college grew from Hart Hall, founded in the 1280s as a medieval lodging house for scholars and tutors. Over the centuries it absorbed smaller halls and changed shape, becoming Hertford College in 1874 after a period as Magdalen Hall. In 1974 it admitted women, joining the first group of all-male Oxford colleges to do so. Around six hundred students now study there at any one time. The college’s long past has produced notable figures. Alumni include the translator William Tyndale, the poet John Donne, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes and the satirist Jonathan Swift. Later graduates range from the novelist Evelyn Waugh and the first female Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to the newsreader Fiona Bruce and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White. Hertford also specialises in Irish studies and has welcomed Irish scholars since the 16th century. Visitors enter through a gatehouse on Catte Street that carries a drinking hart and the motto Sicut cervus anhelat ad fontes aquarum. Beyond lies the Old Quadrangle, where Richard Newton’s 18th-century chapel now serves as the college library. The New Quadrangle is reached by the Bridge of Sighs, a covered walkway of iron and glass. The college fronts a busy street yet keeps quiet courts lined with stone buildings and lawns. From Catte Street the Bodleian’s medieval towers rise directly opposite, framing the scene.