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Hertford’s buildings : from medieval hall to modern college

Hertford College’s Michaelmas Term 2024 archives and rare books display

Cropped architectural sketch in black ink on cream paper showing the OB quad building for the dining hall and spiral staircase.

With the redevelopment of Hertford’s Library and Archives underway, the Michaelmas Term 2024 archives and rare books display traced the history of the buildings college site on Catte Street in Oxford, from medieval hall to the work of architect T.G. Jackson in the nineteenth and twentieth century.

The display was curated by Lucy Rutherford (Archivist), Sophie Floate (Rare Books Cataloguer), Alice Roques (Librarian) and Katherine Knight (Assistant Librarian).

A Medieval Hall

Hart Hall’s history stretches back to the 1280s, when Elias de Hertford leased a lodgings house, known as Hart Hall, to provide accommodation for Oxford students. Along with other small halls, Hart Hall occupied part of the area on Catte Street in central Oxford that went on to become Hertford College. Despite this long history, none of the buildings on the current site date back to these foundations.

S.G. Hamilton’s History of Hertford College was published in 1903 and many of his research notes for the book are now part of Hertford’s Archives. The rough sketch below shows Hamilton’s research about the halls on the Catte Street site, including Cat Hall, Black Hall, Hart Hall, Shield Hall and Arthur Hall. The current site has a mixture of buildings dating from the 1400s onwards.1

Sketch in ink and pencil showing Cat[te] Street and New College Lane. The buildings of Hart Hall, Shield Hall, Arthur Hall, Black Hall, Cat Hall and Dr Newton's Buildings are shown.
Image 1: Hamilton’s sketch of the medieval halls and early modern Hertford College on the Catte Street site, 1896, Hertford Archives

Early Modern Hart Hall

1675 print in black ink on cream paper showing linked stone buildings of two to three storeys, walled gardens and an open area with scholars in gowns walking. The image is labelled 'Aula Cervina'.
Image 2: Loggan’s engraving of Hart Hall from Oxonia Illustrata (Oxford, 1675).

The University’s official engraver, David Loggan, published a volume of images of colleges and university buildings in 1675. It included the 17th century Hart Hall (Aula Cervina), which had grown in size to cover more of the Catte Street site. The sketch includes various early modern buildings that have since been replaced, in some cases multiple times! The Old Hall is one of the oldest remaining parts of these buildings, with windows similar to the ones shown in the buildings in this image.

The photographs below show the northeastern part of OB Quad (with what is now known as the Old Hall in the centre) and were taken by Oxford photographer Henry Taunt, before and after by T.G. Jackson’s renovation works in the late 19th century.

Image 3 (L) and 4 (R): the north east corner of OB Quad, with the Old Hall in the centre. Left image shows the 19th century building before Jackson’s 1887-1889 renovations to the quad, and the right image is shortly after the renovations. Both images from Taunt Photograph Album, 1915, Hertford Archives

The First Hertford College

In the 18th century Richard Newton, Principal from 1710 to 1753, led the transition of Hart Hall into Hertford College. He had extensive plans to rebuild the Catte Street site in an austere Georgian style and paid for the initial construction phase, including a chapel in 1716. However, the works then stalled due to lack of funds.

Section of a copperplate engraving print using black ink showing the detail of a design for the college. There are two wings of buildings with large rectangular windows and a central section with 4 large arched windows.
Image 5: a sketch of Newton’s 18th century plans for Hertford. Printed in Joseph Skelton, Oxonia Antiqua Restaurata, 2nd ed, (Oxford, 1843) and based on G. Vertue’s 1745 engraving.
Pre-1887 black and white photogrph of Hertford's OB quad showing the Georgian chapel in the centre, with a later 1820s building on the right and a wall running along Catte Street. In the background are the spires of the University Church, the roof of the Radcliffe Camera and the Old Bodleian Library.
Image 6: 19th century Taunt photograph of the south of Hertford’s quad which shows, from left to right: the ‘cottages’, Newton’s Georgian chapel, and the 1820s wing facing Catte Street. From Taunt Photograph Album, 1915, Hertford Archives

Newton’s Georgian chapel is the core of the 21st century library building, which is undergoing redevelopment. The building is now Grade II listed, which means it must be carefully preserved during the current project.

In the 1960s the library was divided into two floors and an extension added. The ground floor was left without natural light. The renovation will see the 1960s extension removed and rebuilt and the original Georgian chapel section of the library opened out into a galleried space, allowing light into the ground floor once again.

  • Black and white pre-1907 photograph of Hertford's original chapel. It is a single plan room with dark wood panelling on the lower half of the walls. The upper half of the walls are large arched windows and pale painted walls with decorative plasterwork. There are wooden pews facing each other closely and at the back of the room a curtained section in the wall and a banner reading 'HOLY-HOLY-HOLY'.
    Image 7: 19th century Taunt photograph of the chapel before it was converted into a library
  • Interior of Hertford library showing bookshelves on the three walls, covering plasterwork decorations on the walls. There are large arched windows. In the centre of the room are 20th century light wooden desks with power sockets and red office chairs. A student sits at a chair with papers and a laptop.
    Image 8: The top floor of the library in 2023. Credit: Damian Griffiths
  • A low ceilinged room with wooden bookcases lining the walls. There are ceiling fans and wiring on the ceiling. The centre of the room contains 20th century wooden desks with tall wooden dividers.
    Image 9: The ground floor of the library in 2022. Credit: Damian Griffiths
  • Computer generated image of Hertford Library. Showing a galleried upper level with large arched windows, wooden floors and yellow walls with decorative plasterwork. There are students browsing bookshelves and sat at wooden desks. A metal black balustrade surrounds an opening down into the lower floor. On the lower floor there are lots of wooden bookshelves and students at desks in the centre of the room.
    Image 10: Architect’s impression of the renovated chapel space. Credit: MICA

Magdalen Hall Moves In

In the early 19th century Hertford College ceased to exist and the site was taken over by Magdalen Hall, which had been based next to Magdalen College since the 16th century. The medieval buildings running along Catte Street had collapsed and were replaced in 1820-22. Engravings captured the process of the site being rebuilt in the 1820s. The remains of this 19th century stonemasons’ worksite were uncovered during the archaeological excavations for the current building project.

Image 11 and 12: 1888 Oxford Almanack reproduction, from original in Hertford Archives, and image of building works Michaelmas 2024, photographed by Peter Beilby

The Second Hertford College

In 1874 Magdalen Hall was granted collegiate status and this new incarnation was also, rather confusingly, called Hertford College. This new Hertford College needed some major building work. Architectural historian Prof William Whyte wrote on the challenge of redesigning the college:

‘…Hertford was a college with a split personality as well as a dubious past. It was intended to be a bastion of reaction, but became a hot bed of liberalism. It claimed a six-hundred-year inheritance, but was actually the newest of the new.’2

Image 13: The staircase of the Château de Blois in Jackson’s Architecture (London, 1925)

Principal Henry Boyd joined forces with architect T.G. Jackson to rebuild Hertford. Between the 1870s and the 1920s they created the new dining hall with its distinctive staircase, new chapel, most of NB Quad, and the bridge. The mix of different architectural styles was generally seen as a success. Pevsner’s architectural guide concludes that ‘The [OB] Quad, to sum up, and that is the remarkable thing, does not strike one as disjointed’, that the Bridge of Sighs was ‘a brilliant idea’, but the stairs to hall resemble the ‘bastard child of Blois’.3

Images 14 and 15: Jackson’s sketch of the dining hall and staircase from Hertford Archives, and a photograph of the buildings before the library building works started.
Image credits

Images 1, 13, 15: Hertford College Library & Archives

Images 2-7, 11, 14: Hertford College Library & Archives, photography by Colin Dunn

Images 8 and 9: Hertford College Library & Archives, photography by Damian Griffiths

Image 10: MICA Architects

Image 12: photography by Peter Beilby, Beard

Please do not reproduce these images without seeking permission of Hertford College Library & Archives and the copyright owners.

Notes
  1. This research on halls has been superseded by H.E. Salter, Survey of Oxford. ed. by W.A. Pantin & W.T. Mitchell (Oxford, 1960). A map of the age of current buildings on the Catte Street is in ‘Hertford College’, in A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 3, the University of Oxford, ed. by H.E. Salter & M.D. Lobel (London, 1954), British History Online pp.309-319. ↩︎
  2. W. Whyte, ‘Unbuilt Hertford: T.G. Jackson’s Contextual Dilemma’, Architectural History, v.45 (2002), p.348. ↩︎
  3. J. Sherwood & N. Pevsner, Oxfordshire (Harmondsworth, 1974), pp.139-141. ↩︎

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