St Antony's College

St Antony’s College stands in North Oxford, bounded by Woodstock Road to the west, Bevington Road to the south and Winchester Road to the east. Founded in 1950 by French merchant Sir Antonin Besse, it specialises in international relations, economics, politics and area studies covering Europe, Russia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Japan, China and South and South East Asia. The college occupies a late-Victorian building designed by Charles Buckeridge for a convent founded by Marian Rebecca Hughes, the first Anglican nun since the Reformation. The college is worth the journey because it houses some of Oxford’s most important regional study centres. These include centres for Africa, Asia, Europe, Japan, Latin America, the Middle East and Russia and Eurasia. St Antony’s also gained a reputation during the Cold War as a leading centre for Soviet affairs, which fuelled speculation about links to intelligence services. Its founder hoped the college would improve international cooperation, and today it remains one of Oxford’s most international graduate colleges. Visitors find a mix of historic and modern buildings set around tranquil gardens. The main building, with its simple Gothic lines, still serves as the heart of college life. A statue of Anthony of Padua stands in the Hilda Besse Building, though the college is named after Anthony the Great. The grounds provide quiet places to walk between seminar rooms and libraries dedicated to area studies.