text:
St Antony's College, Oxford

St Antony's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1950 as the result of the gift of French merchant Sir Antonin Besse of Aden, St Antony's specialises in international relations, economics, politics, and area studies relative to Europe, Russia, former Soviet states, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Japan, China, and South and South East Asia.

The college is located in North Oxford, with Woodstock Road to the west, Bevington Road to the south and Winchester Road to the east. St Antony's had a financial endowment of £55.1m as of 2021. Formerly a men's college, it has been coeducational since 1962.

History
St Antony's was founded in 1950 as the result of the gift of Sir Antonin Besse of Aden, a merchant of French descent.

In 1947, Besse was considering giving around £2 million to the University of Oxford to found a new college. Ultimately, on the advice of his solicitor, R Clyde, who had attended New College, Besse decided to go ahead with the plan and permitted Clyde to approach the university with the offer. The university was initially unreceptive to the offer, and recommended that Besse instead devote his funds to improving the finances of some of the poorer existing colleges. Eventually Besse acquiesced, contributing a total of £250,000 in varied amounts to the following colleges: Keble, Worcester, St Peter's, Wadham, Exeter, Pembroke, Lincoln and St Edmund Hall. After this large contribution, the university decided to reconsider Besse's offer to help found a new college and, recognising the need to provide for the growing number of postgraduate students coming to Oxford, gave the venture their blessing; and in 1948, Besse signed a deed of trust appointing the college's first trustees.

The attention of the university then turned to providing the new college, by then called St Antony's, with a permanent home. Ripon Hall was initially considered as a good option for a building in which to house the college, but its owners refused to sell, forcing the university to continue its search for premises. They looked at several properties in quick succession, including Youlbury, the Wytham Abbey estate, and Manchester College, which was known to be in financial difficulties and which might thus consider the sale of its 19th-century Mansfield Road buildings. None of these options proved tenable, and the college began to look elsewhere. It is said that Besse became very frustrated with the university and its apparent lack of interest in his project at this point, and almost gave up any hope of its completion. However the college finally acquired its current premises at 62 Woodstock Road in 1950.

The College first admitted students in Michaelmas Term 1950 and received its Royal Charter in 1953. A supplementary charter was granted in 1962 to allow the college to admit women as well as men, and in 1963 the College became a full member of the University of Oxford. By 1952 the number of students at St Antony's had increased to 27 and by the end of the decade that number had risen to 260, amongst whom 34 different nationalities were represented. The college initially struggled due to a lack of funding, and in the late 1960s serious consideration was given to uniting St Antony's with All Souls College when All Souls announced its intention to take a more active role in the education of graduate students. The plan did not come to fruition; All Souls rejected the proposed federal nature of the combined institution, saying they would consider nothing less than a full merger, a proposal which St Antony's governing body did not support. St Antony's lack of funds was partly solved under the wardenship of William Deakin, who devoted himself to college fund-raising and secured a number of generous loans from the Ford and Volkswagen foundations. Since then, St Antony's has almost constantly been financially insecure. This led to the cancellation of a number of proposed physical developments at its site on Woodstock Road. Not until the 1990s was it feasible for the college to embark upon a new building programme; however, since then St Antony's has continued to expand and open new specialist centres for the pursuit of area studies. The college is now recognised as one of the world's foremost centres for such studies. and houses centres for the study of Africa, Asia, Europe, Japan, Latin America, the Middle East and Russia and Eurasia.

From the beginning Besse had expressed his hope that the new college, which he intended to open to men "irrespective of origin, race or creed", would prove instrumental in improving international cooperation and intercultural understanding. The college soon announced its primary role as such: "to be a centre of advanced study and research in the fields of modern international history, philosophy, economics and politics and to provide an international centre within the University where graduate students from all over the world can live and work together in close contact with senior members of the University who are specialists in their fields". The college is still true to its founding principle, remaining one of the most international colleges of the university, and home to many of Oxford's region-specific study departments. This latter feature, combined with the wardenship of William Deakin and St Antony's reputation as a key centre for the study of Soviet affairs during the Cold War, led to rumours of links between the college and the British intelligence services; the author Leslie Woodhead wrote to this effect, describing the college as "a fitting gathering place for old spooks". St Antony's became notorious in both the British and Russian press as a "spy college." The character of Roy Bland from John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is said to have been a top specialist in Soviet satellite states educated at St Antony's, from where he was recruited by George Smiley.

The official annals of the university state that St Antony's was one of four colleges, along with All Souls, Nuffield and Christ Church, which made a concerted effort to establish external links. In St Antony's case, the college established wide-ranging connections with diplomats and foreign visitors; this is further commented on as having made the college "perhaps more significant than any other single development in Oxford's adjustment to the contemporary international academic environment".

The college's name alludes to its founder, whose name, Antonin Besse, is derived from the same linguistic root. For a long time it was not made clear whether Anthony the Great or Anthony of Padua was the intended namesake. The matter was finally settled in 1961, when the college finally deemed Anthony the Great to be more the appropriate choice, due to his links to one of the college's prime areas of specialisation - the Middle and Near East. Despite this, the college's banner is flown each year on both saints' days as a matter of tradition, and a statue of the "wrong" Anthony, Anthony of Padua (distinguished by his holding of the Christ child), stands in the college's Hilda Besse Building.

Main building
The college's main building was built in the early Victorian era for the Society of the Holy and Undivided Trinity at the behest of Marian Rebecca Hughes, the first woman to take monastic vows within the Church of England since the reformation. The order commissioned Charles Buckeridge, a local architect of some renown, to design the convent buildings. After initially proposing a circular design based on the symbolism of the holy trinity, Buckeridge took to a more traditional approach and drew up the plans for what is now St Antony's main building some time before 1865. Whilst initially there were plans to enlarge the convent with a northerly extension, for which place was made in the building's design, further building never took place. The convent finally opened in November 1868.

The total cost of the initial build was eight thousand pounds, a considerable sum at that time. It is said that upon first seeing the convent's new premises, the architect William Butterfield commented that it was the 'best modern building in Oxford after my college', by which he meant Keble. St Antony's acquired the former convent in 1950 after it had been vacated by the convent and Halifax House, which had occupied the premises in the immediate post war period. The building's chapel, which was never consecrated and now houses the college library, was built in the years 1891–1894 to Buckeridge's original design. The three panel paintings round the apse of the former chapel are by Charles Edgar Buckeridge. The main building's undercroft, now the Gulbenkian Reading Room, was initially used by the nuns as a refectory, a role it continued to play until the completion of the Hilda Besse building in 1970.

1960s: The Hilda Besse Building
After a number of ambitious schemes, one of which had been designed by Oscar Niemeyer, to enlarge the college in the 1960s fell through due to lack of funds, the college decided to concentrate its efforts in providing for the construction of a small extension and acquisition of neighbouring properties. The Hilda Besse Building (then known as New Building) was opened in 1970; this building still serves its original purpose in housing the college's dining hall, graduate common room, and buttery (college bar), as well as ancillary meeting rooms. The next major expansion of the college came in 1993 with the completion of a new building to house the Nissan Institute for Japanese Studies and the Bodleian Japanese Library, whilst additional accommodation was not supplied until the Founder's Building was opened to mark the millennium in the year 2000. The Wahba Dining Hall, the main dining hall for the college located on the first floor of the Hilda Besse Building, was also used as a filming location for The Amateur, a 2025 spy film starring Rami Malek.

2000s: The Gateway Buildings
In the early 21st century not much development took place until completion of the college's new Gateway Buildings in 2013, which provide a new main entrance to the college and form the east, and final, side of the college's first quadrangle. The funding for this was gained in part by Foulath Hadid who, for his outstanding services to the college, was elected to an Honorary Fellowship in 2004, and the Hadid Room, the college's meeting room, was named in his honour.

The Investcorp Building
As part of its ongoing development programme, St Antony's commissioned the construction of a new centre for Middle Eastern Studies. The Middle East Centre, or Investcorp Building, was designed by the Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid; it broke ground on 30 January 2013 and was opened as the Investcorp Building on 26 May 2015. The Guardian described it as a "writhing metallic slug that does its best to maul the two historic buildings between which its contorted body is slung". It was awarded the Sir Hugh Casson Award in 2015 for the worst new building of the year.

Student life and study
St Antony's College has some 450 students from over 66 nationalities; about half of the students have a first language other than English. Student interests are represented by an elected body, the Graduate Common Room (GCR) Executive, which is elected on an annual basis at the end of Michaelmas Term. Most college accommodation is located on site, with around 104 en-suite bedrooms provided in the Gateway and Founder's buildings. Further rooms are to be found in converted Victorian houses both on site or very close by.

The college is host to the St Antony's Late Bar, located on the ground floor of the award-winning Hilda Besse building and serving students throughout the academic year. In addition to operating as a bar, it hosts numerous themed bops, culture/region/country nights, live music events (guest concerts, open-mic nights, Battle of the Bands), welfare/charity functions, various tastings and launch parties, among others. Recurring events include Halloqueen, USA Night, Latin Bop, Balkan Night, and the thrice-annual Drink the Bar Dry.

Libraries and publications
The Old Main Building - the former Holy Trinity Convent which was built in the 1860s - houses the College Library (including the Gulbenkian Reading Room) and the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre Library. The College Library keeps general collections in modern history, politics, international relations and economics, collections on Europe, Asia, and the non-Slavonic collections on Russia and the former Soviet Union. It holds over 50,000 volumes and back issues of over 300 journal titles. It also houses some 20th-century archive collections, including the Wheeler-Bennett papers. St Antony's is associated with the Oxford Libraries Information System (OLIS), and has been a contributor to the university's online union library catalogue since 1990.

The other libraries on the College site are the Middle East Centre Library, the Bodleian Latin American Centre Library, the Bodleian Japanese Library and the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre Library, the last of which was refurbished in 2008–2009 as part of the college's rolling construction and rejuvenation program. The college also holds an extensive collection of archival material relating to the Middle East at the Middle East Centre Archive, the premises of which were greatly expanded with the completion of Zaha Hadid's Softbridge building in mid-2014. The area studies libraries on site are unique within the university and thus generally open to all its students, regardless of college affiliation; they typically hold a wide collection of primary language sources and further Anglophone texts - an abundance of specialist material and unique expertise which prompted Leslie Woodhead to comment as follows: Generations of well-informed men with unusual backgrounds have passed through the college, excavating the remarkable library and sharing their knowledge of some of the world's more secretive places.

The college's Graduate Common Room has, since 2005, published a biannual academic journal entitled the St Antony's International Review, which is more commonly known by its acronym - STAIR. The journal represents a medium through which aspiring young academics can publish their work alongside their established policy-makers and their peers. Furthermore, the college publishes a termly newsletter, the Antonian, and a college record - an annual report on college affairs.

Sports and societies
This is further fostered by the communal social life of the college. St. Antony's College Boat Club has multiple boats in Oxford's regattas, and has seen success in recent years. The football club is also popular amongst students. Other societies include the gardening club.

Rankings
As a postgraduate only college, St Antony's does not appear in the university's annual Norrington Table.

Traditions and attributes
St Antony's is a largely informal college, mandating the wearing of academic dress (sub fusc) only for the university's matriculation and graduation ceremonies. The college does not maintain a permanent high table, instead choosing to serve high table meals on a number of occasions each week for the college's fellows and visiting academics. Students often attend high table at the invitation of their supervisors. As a graduate college, St Antony's students play an important role in the day-to-day business of running the college through their elected body of representatives - the Graduate Common Room or GCR.

Coat of arms
The college's arms were granted in 1952, and reflect the college's namesake: Anthony the Great of Egypt. The red represents the Red Sea, whilst the gold was chosen to reflect desert sands. The stars (heraldically known as "mullets") were taken from the founder's trade mark, whilst the T-shaped elements are traditional crosses of St Antony. The heraldic blazon for these arms is as follows:

Or on a chevron between three tau crosses gules as many pierced mullets of the field.

The college's motto 'plus est en vous' is sometimes added in complement to its arms: they are typically placed upon a scroll beneath the escutcheon (shield); this version of the arms is most commonly found on the cover of St Antony's Papers issues. The motto itself can be translated literally as "there is more in you", although it is commonly taken to imply the following English expression: "There is more to you than meets the eye".

Grace
St Antony's is one of nine colleges at the university to employ the 'two-word' Latin grace. This is statistically the most popular form of grace said at hall in Oxford and also in Cambridge, where it is used by five colleges. The grace is read out in two parts at the college's formal meals, which take place thrice each term. The first half of the grace or ante cibum is said before the start of the meal and the second, the post cibum, once the meal has ended. It is read as follows:

Benedictus benedicat - "May the Blessed One give a blessing"

Benedicto benedicatur - "Let praise be given to the Blessed One"

The grace is said in keeping with tradition. However, unlike at most Oxford colleges, St Antony's does not require its students to stand and acknowledge the saying of grace. The second half of the grace or post cibum can also be translated (based on the ablative case rather than the dative case) as "Let a blessing be given by the Blessed One".

Wardens
The first Warden of the college was Sir William Deakin (1950–1968), a young Oxford academic who in the Second World War became an adventurous soldier and aide to Winston Churchill. He won Antonin Besse's confidence and played the key role in turning his vision into the centre of excellence that St Antony's has become. Sir Raymond Carr (1968–1987), a distinguished historian of Spain, expanded the college and its regional coverage and opened its doors to visiting scholars from all over the world.

Sir Ralf Dahrendorf (later Lord Dahrendorf) (1987–1997) came to St Antony's after a distinguished career as a social theorist and politician in Germany, a European Commissioner and Director of the London School of Economics. He further enlarged the college and developed its role as a source of policy advice. The previous Warden, Sir Marrack Goulding (1997–2006), served in the British Diplomatic Service for 26 years before becoming an Under Secretary-General at the United Nations. His appointment underlined the international nature of the college and its links with government and business. Following the retirement of the fifth Warden of the College Margaret MacMillan in October 2017, social anthropologist Roger Goodman was elected Warden, having previously served in an acting capacity between 2006 and 2007.

 * Sir William Deakin, 1950–68
 * Sir Raymond Carr, 1968–87
 * Sir Ralf Dahrendorf (1987–1993), later Lord Dahrendorf, 1987–97
 * Sir Marrack Goulding, 1997–2006
 * Roger Goodman, (acting), October 2006–July 2007
 * Margaret MacMillan, 2007–17
 * Roger Goodman, 2017–

Former students
St Antony's alumni (Antonians) have achieved success in a wide variety of careers; these include writers, politicians, academics and a large number of civil servants, diplomats and representatives of international organisations.

Former students with careers as politicians and civil servants include Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, the 6th President of Iceland, Álvaro Uribe, who was President of Colombia from 2002 to 2010 and his Minister of Foreign Affairs Jaime Bermúdez, Yigal Allon, a deputy and acting Prime Minister of Israel, former Vice President of the European Commission and current Finnish Minister of Economic Affairs Olli Rehn, the Dutch Minister of Finance and former Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation and former UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Sigrid Kaag, the former Secretary of State for Wales John Redwood, former EU Commissioner Jean Dondelinger, the Canadian politician John Godfrey, Gary Hart, a former US Senator and presidential candidate, and US Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), a former US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Diplomats Joseph A. Presel, Gustavo Bell and Shlomo Ben-Ami are also Antonians. Furthermore, Minouche Shafik, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England and former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, is an Antonian, as are three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Thomas Friedman and Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Dexter Filkins.

Further Antonians include Anne Applebaum, former editor at The Economist, Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, Member of the European Parliament, book author Agnia Grigas, the Bulgarian communist Lyudmila Zhivkova, Indian journalist Sagarika Ghose and Rhodes scholar Chrystia Freeland, Canada's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, and a former director at Thomson Reuters.

In academia, Sir Christopher Bayly was Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge, whilst Wm. Roger Louis is Kerr Chair in English History and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin, Craig Calhoun, current president of the Berggruen Institute is the former director of the London School of Economics, where he remains Centennial Professor, Frances Lannon is the principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Richard Evans is the Regis professor of Modern History at Cambridge, Anthony Venables holds Oxford's BP professorship in Economics and was Chief Economist at the UK's Department for International Development; Paul Kennedy is the Dilworth professor of British History at Yale, Rashid Khalidi a professor at Columbia and Michael T. Benson is the president of Coastal Carolina University.

The college also counts the Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer Davis Tarwater, violinist and conductor Joji Hattori, screenwriter Julian Mitchell and the historian Margaret MacMillan amongst its alumni.

Academics

 * Timothy Garton Ash, journalist and author on European matters
 * Mats Berdal, Professor of Security and Development at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.
 * Archie Brown, historian of the end of the Cold War and author of The Gorbachev Factor
 * Paul Collier, Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford
 * Michael Kaser, economist and author of Soviet Economics
 * Homa Katouzian, literary critic and scholar of Iranian studies
 * Paul Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History; Director, International Security Studies, Yale University
 * Alan Knight, post-critical historian, Director of the Latin American Centre, and author of the two-volume award-winning book The Mexican Revolution (1986)
 * Wm. Roger Louis, historian and scholar of the British Empire, especially Decolonization.
 * Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Professor of International Relations and Director of the European Studies Centre
 * Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies
 * Oliver Ready, translator of Russian literature
 * Eugene Rogan, historian of the Modern Middle East and author of The Arabs: A History
 * Robert Service, historian of the USSR and biographer of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin
 * Avi Shlaim, historian writing on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
 * Vivienne Shue, FBA, sinologist and author of "The Reach of the State"
 * Omer Bartov, historian writing on genocide focused on the Holocaust; author of seven books.
 * Arnab Goswami, Journalist, Editor-in-Chief(Republic Media Networks)

Former fellows

 * Michael Herman, founder of the Oxford Intelligence Group
 * Foulath Hadid, Honorary Fellow
 * Albert Hourani, Founder-Director, Middle East Centre, St Antony's College, Oxford
 * James Joll, historian, fellow (1950–67)
 * Sudipta Kaviraj, Professor of Political Sciences, Columbia University, New York
 * Frank McLynn, historian and biographer
 * Tapan Raychaudhuri, Emeritus Fellow, St Antony's College, Oxford
 * Giulio Angioni, Italian writer and anthropologist
 * José Cutileiro, Portuguese diplomat, historian, and author
 * Michael Aris, leading Western authority on Bhutanese, Tibetan and Himalayan culture, Husband of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi

title: St Antony's College, Oxford


text:
St Benet's Hall, Oxford

St Benet's Hall (known colloquially as Benet's) was a permanent private hall (PPH) of the University of Oxford, originally a Roman Catholic religious house of studies. It closed in 2022. The principal building was located at the northern end of St Giles' on its western side, close to the junction with Woodstock Road, Oxford.

Benedictine antecedents

Benedictine monks had studied at Oxford since at least 1281, when Gloucester Abbey founded Gloucester College. The area today known as Gloucester Green was named after this college. In 1291, Durham Abbey founded Durham College, and in 1362, Christ Church Priory in Canterbury founded Canterbury College. All three Benedictine houses of study were closed between 1536 and 1545, during the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. Gloucester College was eventually re-founded as Worcester College. Durham College was re-founded as Trinity College, but the original college's name is preserved in Trinity's Durham Quadrangle. Canterbury College's property was acquired by Christ Church. Until the establishment of St Benet's Hall in 1897, the Benedictines had been absent from the university for over 350 years.

St Benet's Hall was not a re-foundation of any of the former Benedictine colleges of Oxford. Rather, the hall had a tenuous connection with Westminster Abbey by virtue of its establishment by Ampleforth Abbey. In the 960s or early 970s, Saint Dunstan, assisted by King Edgar, installed a community of Benedictine monks at Westminster. Although the Benedictine priories and abbeys in England were closed during the dissolution of the monasteries, one solitary Benedictine monastery was re-established in Westminster Abbey in 1553 by Mary I as part of her unsuccessful attempt to restore Catholicism in England. After her death, Elizabeth I dissolved the monastery once again. By 1607, only one of the Westminster monks was still alive, Dom Sigebert Buckley (c. 1520–1610). In 1608, Buckley "aggregated" two English exiles who had become monks of the Italian Cassinese Congregation, and thereby allegedly passed on to them the "rights and privileges" of the mediaeval English Benedictine abbeys (to be distinguished from the post-Reformation English Benedictine Congregation). In 1615, these two English monks became part of a community which took up residence in the abandoned collegiate church of Saint Laurent, in the town of Dieulouard, near Nancy in the Lorraine region of north-eastern France. The monks adopted St Lawrence as their patron saint. In 1792, Dieulouard Priory was closed and the monks were expelled from France as part of the hostility against the clergy associated with the French Revolution. They opted to return to England.

At that time a Benedictine monk-priest, Fr Anselm Bolton, was the chaplain to Lady Anne Fairfax at Gilling Castle, North Yorkshire. She was the only daughter of Charles Gregory Fairfax, 9th and last Viscount Fairfax of Emley. She built Ampleforth Lodge for Fr Bolton just before she died in 1792. In 1802, Bolton handed this house over to his brethren from Dieulouard who had been living in England without a permanent home for a decade. The lodge became their new monastery, Ampleforth Priory. In 1803, the monks established Ampleforth College, today an independent Catholic secondary school.

The priory was elevated to the status of an independent abbey in 1899 by Pope Leo XIII in the papal bull Diu quidem est. Ampleforth Abbey renamed the hall of studies as St. Benet's Hall in 1918 when it became a permanent private hall of the university.

Private hall of studies
In October 1897, the priory had established a private hall of studies at Oxford for the purpose of enabling its monks to read for secular degrees at the University of Oxford. The hall was not founded as a theological college but rather as a place where student monks could read for a degree in any secular subject.

Private halls of study at the university took their name from their Master, and so the hall was known successively as Hunter-Blair's Hall and Parker's Hall. It was initially housed at 103 Woodstock Road. This house is still in existence, opposite SS Philip and James Church, and is now a guest-house. The hall was there until 1904, when it moved to the former Grindle's Hall in Beaumont Street, from which it removed in 1922 to the present buildings of 38 and 39 St Giles. The Beaumont Street houses were demolished in 1938 to make space for the Oxford Playhouse theatre.

Permanent private hall of the University of Oxford
St Benet's became a permanent private hall of the university in 1918, after new university legislation created the status of PPH. It took as its official name Aula Privata Sancti Benedicti: in English, "St Benedict's (or St Benet's) Private Hall". (Benet is a mediaeval English variant of the name Benedict.) It was named after St Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–547), the founder of the Benedictine order, father of western monasticism and a patron saint of Europe and of students.

The character of the hall changed over the years, acquiring fellows in imitation of the university's constituent colleges. However, as a PPH of the university, the hall's fellows did not constitute its governing body. Rather, they shared with the master the day-to-day running of the hall, and elected one of their number to serve as a trustee of the St Benet's Trust when that charity was founded in 2012. Before then, the hall was a private possession of Ampleforth Abbey. The hall matriculated students to be members of the university, so those of its student body who matriculated were full members of the university in all ways, and were able to supplicate for degrees on the successful completion of their studies. For most of its members the only noticeable difference made by the hall's legal status is that it was very much smaller than any of the Oxford constituent colleges.

With the decline of monastic vocations beginning in the 1960s, more and more Roman Catholic laymen were admitted - especially under Master James Forbes OSB, including some Old Amplefordians. Under Master Philip Holdsworth OSB (1979–1989), the hall again emphasised a monastic ethos and also became more theological in character, with many monks from the English Benedictine Congregation and other Benedictine Congregations studying theology at Blackfriars. Master Henry Wansbrough (1990–2004) started again to admit laymen, thus creating a mixed focus on theology, philosophy and the humanities.

There was never a policy that lay members of the Hall, both undergraduates and postgraduates, should be Catholics - and in the 21st century most were not. However, all members were asked to be supportive of the monks' life and values.

A review of the PPHs conducted by the university in 2007 concluded that St Benet's had a "good sense of its place within the collegiate University" and drew attention to the "commitment and care" of the hall's academic staff. In May 2013 the Student Barometer survey results showed that St Benet's Hall had the highest overall student satisfaction score out of the 44 constituent colleges and permanent private halls of the university.

Sexual abuse scandal
In 1996 Bernard Green OSB (1953-2013), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey, was convicted of sexually abusing a 14-year old schoolboy at the monastery's school, Ampleforth College, in the previous year. He was put on probation and prohibited from teaching. Despite this, the abbey sent him to reside and teach at St Benet's Hall in 2000 without, allegedly, informing the hall of his conviction. He was issued with a "final" letter of warning by the university in 2005, after being accused of sexually harassing a 19-year-old undergraduate member of the hall. This letter was supposedly unknown to the hall until 2006, but Green was subsequently kept in residence until 2012 when he was finally dismissed. The scandal came to the notice of the national media.

Final decade
Until 2012, the Master of the hall was always a Benedictine monk from Ampleforth. On 1 September of that year, Werner Jeanrond, formerly holder of the 1640 Chair of Divinity at the University of Glasgow, became the new Master. He was the first Catholic layman ever to run the hall. Jeanrond became a full member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at Oxford and was engaged in both teaching and research, as well as serving as head of house.

Until 2016, St Benet's was the last constituent body of the University of Oxford admitting only men. It was also the last single-sex college or hall in the university after St Hilda's College, the last all-women's college in Oxford, admitted men in 2008. In November 2013, under Professor Jeanrond, the hall announced its intention to admit women graduate students within one year and women undergraduates as soon as additional housing facilities were obtained. Women were admitted as graduate students in October 2014, and as undergraduates in October 2016. Thus 2016 was the year when all constituent colleges and halls of the university became fully coeducational. (The University of Cambridge retains two constituent colleges for female students only.)

To allow for the admission of undergraduate women, in October 2015 St Benet's Hall acquired a hall of residence owned by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, at 11 Norham Gardens, next to University Parks and near Lady Margaret Hall. So the hall became a co-educational academic community, latterly consisting of 84 undergraduate students and 48 graduate students of all faiths and none.

The degree subjects to which the last undergraduate students were admitted by St Benet's were: Theology, Philosophy and Theology, Theology and Oriental Studies, History, History and Politics, History and Economics, Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), Classics, Classics with Oriental Studies, Oriental Studies (Egyptology; Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Islamic Studies, Hebrew Studies, and Jewish Studies), Oriental Studies with Classics, and Human Science. The hall admitted graduate students from the same subjects as undergraduates as well as those who studied at the Blavatnik School of Government, the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, and the Saïd Business School.

Closure
In September 2021, it was announced that the John and Daria Barry Foundation, a philanthropic trust run by the venture capitalist John F. Barry III, was making a £40 million rescue offer to enable the hall to become completely independent of Ampleforth Abbey. This was on condition that the buildings would be purchased from the Ampleforth Abbey Trust for £15 million (less than their market value), that the St Benet's Trust was to be made completely separate from the abbey and that the chair was to be the prominent conservative philosopher and academic Robert P. George of Princeton University. Barry himself was on record as describing the venture as a Hail Mary pass, indicating limited expectations of success.

However, in December of that year, the university stated that without the abbey's continued financial support, "it cannot be confident that the hall can support a new undergraduate cohort for the full duration of their studies". The major issues were that the hall's endowments were inadequate, the two buildings were owned by Ampleforth Abbey and operational deficits were being covered by subsidies from the abbey.

So, the university announced that it would temporarily cease to accept undergraduate matriculations from the hall, owing to these serious financial issues. May 2022 was the deadline for deciding this point as regards the academic year 2022–3.

In that month it was made public that the University Council had decided not to renew the hall's PPH licence, which implied that the hall would close at the end of the 2022 academic year. The university had decided that the new arrangements proposed by the Barry Foundation would not be financially viable and questioned the implications of the new board, and so they were rejected.

In June 2022 it was finally announced that the buildings would be vacated by October 2022, and that the university was seeking alternative colleges to which existing students would transfer. The buildings were subsequently purchased by St Hilda's College. The hall was formally closed on 30 September 2022. The last member of staff vacated the St Giles house on 7 October. The wine cellar of 1,100 bottles was donated to Blackfriars. Students relocated individually to other colleges and halls of the university to continue their studies. The St Benet's Hall Boat Club continues to operate.

St Benet's Hall Association
The St Benet’s Hall Association is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 2007 by Benet’s alumni. Its purpose is to promote a close relationship amongst those who studied, lived or taught at St Benet’s Hall. Following the dissolution of the Hall, the Association became the focal point for Old Benetians worldwide, organising regular social and networking events, both independently and with other constituents of the University of Oxford.

38 and 39 St Giles
The hall occupied 38-39 St Giles from 1923 to 2022. This is a rather plain late Regency style edifice of four storeys, with a further attic storey and cellars. The cellar area ensured that the original set of wrought iron railings have survived, as has a wrought iron balcony across the façade at the second storey. The first storey has six round-headed windows in recessed frames, flanked by a pair of matching doors with fanlights. The second storey has eight tall rectangular windows, complemented by shorter ones for the third storey and square ones for the fourth. The third and fourth storeys are separated by a moulded string course which is the only decorative feature of the façade. The slate mansard roof has attic windows inserted.

The dining hall took up most of the ground floor, and the common room and library were above that. The chapel is a red brick garden annexe in a vaguely Gothic style.

The original building dates from 1830, and was constructed as two separate houses (38 and 39). The site was previously part of a coster's (i.e., fruit seller's) yard and stable. In the nineteenth century, the two houses served as private homes for several Anglican clergy connected to the university, and to a number of widows of independent means.

The northern house (38 St Giles) was, in 1841, occupied as the private dwelling of the Rev. Philip Bliss, Registrar of the University of Oxford and later principal of St Mary's Hall. Bliss lived there with his wife and four servants. A decade later, it was the home of the university's public orator and vice principal and later principal of Magdalen Hall, the Rev. Richard Michell. In 1874, Michell became first principal of the refounded Hertford College. After a two-year period as the Oxford High School (1879–1881), it became a private home once more, belonging briefly to Charlotte Cotton, widow of the Rev. Richard Lynch Cotton, provost of Worcester College (1881–1882). It then belonged to the Rev. S. J. Hulme, chaplain of Wadham College (1884–1887). In 1889, it served briefly as the Oxford Eye Hospital which is today part of the John Radcliffe Hospital. In 1891, it was acquired by Madame de Leobardy and opened as St Ursula's Convent, a boarding and day school for Roman Catholic girls.

The southern house (39 St Giles) was the private home of Letitia Pett (1841–1846) and Maria Brown (1852–1861), both widows. It was then acquired by the Rev.Richard Greswell, tutor in theology at Worcester College, and his family (1861–1881). After his death in 1881, his widow Joanna Greswell lived in the house until 1894. The British military historian Sir Charles William Chadwick Oman, a fellow of All Souls College and the Chichele Professor of Modern History, acquired the house in 1898 and lived there until 1908. In 1909, it too was purchased by Madame de Leobardy and became an extension of the convent school next door. The chapel in the garden is evidence of this.

St Ursula's Convent School closed in 1922. Ampleforth Abbey acquired both buildings in 1923, and combined the two into one residence. It was the sole building of St Benet's Hall until 2015.

11 Norham Gardens
A large house in Norham Gardens was acquired in 2015, as part of the policy of expansion begun in 2012.

The original Victorian Gothic villa was built in 1860 and designed by William Wilkinson, who was also responsible for the Randolph Hotel, Oxford. Norham Gardens is in an area originally known as Norham Manor and was owned by St John's College. Past occupants of 11 Norham Gardens include Henry Balfour, the first curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum, and Francis Llewellyn Griffith, the first professor of Egyptology at Oxford. Griffith's archaeological finds form the backbone of the Egyptian collections at the Ashmolean Museum. In 1932 the Society of the Sacred Heart, a Roman Catholic order of nuns, purchased the villa. The purpose of this acquisition was to provide accommodation for women students at Oxford registered at the Society of Oxford Home-Students which later became St Anne's College. In 1951, a new wing was added as a student hostel providing 21 rooms. These rooms also accommodated women at St Anne's, which became a constituent college of the university in 1952. The association with St Anne's lessened over time and women students (mostly undergraduates) from across the university lived in the hostel, whilst the Sisters lived in the villa. By the 1990s the student population in the hostel became entirely postgraduate, housing both men and women of any faith or none. In spring 2015, the Sacred Heart Sisters decided to sell the house and hostel complex to St Benet's Hall to enable the latter to become fully co-educational by Michaelmas Term 2016.

Administration
The governing body of the hall comprised the trustees of a charity known as the St Benet's Trust, created in 2012 with the trust's chair being ex officio the Abbot of Ampleforth Abbey. However, the assets of this Trust were wholly owned by the Ampleforth Abbey Trust. In 2016, Abbot Cuthbert Madden resigned after allegations of sexual abuse and was replaced as chair by a lay fellow.

Unlike the university's colleges and other PPHs, St Benet's had a joint common room of which all at the hall were members. The JCR had its own committee, and was responsible for running the St Benet's bar and gym facilities.

Refectory
Again unlike the university's constituent colleges, the hall did not have a high table but one common dining table shared by all members. Members of the hall were entitled to invite guests to all meals, with the result that fellows, lecturers, monks, students, and their guests mixed freely. The dining hall was known as the refectory, in accordance with monastic tradition.

The following grace was said in Latin before every formal Hall meal, which at St Benet's was latterly held on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. It was recited by the Master or a person he designated. In addition, after grace, an undergraduate student would read a short passage from the Rule of St Benedict in English.

 * Gratiarum actio ante cibum
 * Benedic Domine,
 * nos et haec tua dona
 * quae de tua largitate sumus sumpturi,
 * per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen

 * Grace before the meal
 * Bless us, O Lord,
 * and these thy gifts
 * which we are about to receive from thy bounty,
 * through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Grace after the meal was said in Latin after formal hall by the chaplain in the following form:

 * Gratiarum actio post cibum
 * Agimus tibi gratias,
 * omnipotens Deus,
 * pro universis beneficiis tuis,
 * qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

 * Grace after the meal
 * We give thee thanks,
 * O almighty God,
 * for all thy benefits,
 * who livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen.

Sport
Despite the small size of the hall, the St Benet's Hall Boat Club raced an eight boat on the River Thames for many years. In recent years, it has had a good record of winning 'blades', the trophy awarded for 'bumping' (rowing past teams ranked above) every day in the Torpids and Summer Eights bumps races. The Boat Club's M1 won blades most recently in 2019. Although the Hall is closed, the St. Benet's Hall Boat Club still exists. The hall also had its own netball, rugby sevens, and field hockey teams, as well as a football team joint with Regent's Park College. The Benet's rugby sevens team is the back-to-back 2018 and 2019 Oxford University rugby sevens champion.

Coat of arms
St Benet's Hall used the same coat of arms as Ampleforth Abbey and Ampleforth College but, like the college, without the abbot's crozier and galero (ecclesiastical hat with tassels). The arms were granted to the abbey by the English College of Arms in 1922. The abbey made the application to the College of Arms to regularise its armorial position as the alleged lineal descendant of Westminster Abbey. The purpose of this move was to conform to proper authority and thus not be open to the charge of lack of consideration for post-Reformation bodies already bearing variants of the Westminster arms in their own line of heraldic descent.

The Pre-Reformation City of Westminster sometimes used a red shield with two keys in saltire to symbolise Saint Peter to whom its Abbey Church was dedicated. In addition, Westminster also used a blue shield with a gold “cross flory” between five gold martlets (heraldic birds). This forms the attributed arms of St Edward the Confessor (reign 1042–1066), the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, who is regarded as the principal patron and founder of Westminster Abbey. Both these arms appear in the chief (top portion) of the shield. The base (lower portion) of the shield is gold and blue divided “dancetté” (by a zigzag line). This represents the arms of the pre-Reformation Abbots of Westminster who would place their personal coat of arms in the top portion (chief) of the shield. The last Benedictine Abbot of Westminster to use this coat of arms was John Feckenham (c. 1515–1584) who was removed from office by Elizabeth I in 1560 at the final suppression of the abbey. The abbey church then became known as the Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster, which remains its official name to this day.

The shield of Ampleforth Abbey, Ampleforth College, and St Benet's Hall was thus a combination of three shields – the first representing St Peter (top left), the second representing St Edward the Confessor (top right), and the bottom representing the pre-Reformation Benedictine Abbots of Westminster. The heraldic blazon of the arms is as follows: Per fesse dancetté Or and Azure a chief per pale Gules and of the second charged on the dexter with two keys in saltire Or and Argent and on the sinister with a Cross Flory between five martlets of the first. Although not official, the motto associated with the hall is Ausculta, O fili, praecepta magistri which translates as "Listen, O [my] son, to the precepts of [thy] master." This is taken from the Latin original of the opening line of the prologue to the Rule of St. Benedict.

Masters
St Benet's had twelve masters following its establishment in 1897:

 * Oswald Hunter Blair OSB (1898–1909)
 * Anselm Parker OSB (1909–1920)
 * Justin McCann OSB (1920–1947)
 * Gerard Sitwell OSB (1947–1964)
 * James Forbes OSB (1964–1979)
 * Philip Holdsworth OSB (1979–1989)
 * Fabian Cowper OSB (1989–1990)
 * Henry Wansbrough OSB (1990–2004); Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible
 * Leo Chamberlain OSB (2004–2007)
 * Felix Stephens OSB (2007–2012)
 * Werner Jeanrond (2012–2018)
 * Richard Cooper (2018–2022)

Fellows
Notable fellows of the hall include:
 * Brian Klug, senior research fellow in Philosophy (2000–2022)
 * Susan Doran, fellow in history (2007–2022)
 * Harry Sidebottom, fellow and director of studies in ancient history (2008–2014)

Honorary fellows

 * Leo Chamberlain; Master of St Benet's Hall 2004–2007; Titular Cathedral Prior of Gloucester
 * Peter Hennessy, Baron Hennessy of Nympsfield, FBA; Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History, Queen Mary, University of London
 * Werner Jeanrond; Master of St Benet's Hall 2012–2018; Professor of Systematic Theology (Dogmatics), University of Oslo
 * Henry Mayr-Harting; emeritus Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Oxford
 * Peter Sutherland GCIH, KCMG, SC; previously Attorney General of Ireland. He also held office as non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International, chairman of the London School of Economics, and Consultor of the Extraordinary Section of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See.
 * Henry Wansbrough; Master of St Benet's Hall 1990–2004; Titular Cathedral Prior of Norwich 2004–2009; Titular Cathedral Prior of Durham

Notable alumni

 * John Balme, alumnus, American conductor, opera manager, and pianist
 * David Blair, alumnus and chief foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph
 * Bishop Donald Joseph Bolen, alumnus and Roman Catholic Bishop of Saskatoon
 * Damian Collins, alumnus and Member of Parliament (MP) for Folkestone and Hythe
 * John Cornwell, alumnus, author, and academic at Jesus College, University of Cambridge
 * Lumumba Stanislaus-Kaw Di-Aping, alumnus and Sudanese diplomat
 * Cardinal Basil Hume OM, OSB (1923–1999), alumnus, Abbot of Ampleforth (1963–1976) and Archbishop of Westminster (1976–1999)
 * Professor Olegario González de Cardedal, alumnus and chair of theology, Pontifical University of Salamanca, Spain
 * Martin Jennings, alumnus and sculptor
 * Sir Anthony Kenny, FBA, alumnus, analytical philosopher, and former Master of Balliol College, Oxford
 * General Jacko Page, alumnus and lieutenant general, 6th Infantry Division, British Army
 * Columba Stewart, alumnus and American Benedictine monk, scholar, executive director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library in Collegeville, Minnesota

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: St Benet's Hall, Oxford


text:
St Edmund Hall, Oxford

St Edmund Hall (sometimes known as The Hall or informally as Teddy Hall) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. The college claims to be "the oldest surviving academic society to house and educate undergraduates in any university" and was the last surviving medieval academic hall at the university.

The college is on Queen's Lane and the High Street, in central Oxford. After more than seven centuries as a men-only college, it became coeducational in 1979. As of 2019, the college had a financial endowment of more than £65 million.

Notable alumni of St Edmund Hall include current British prime minister Keir Starmer, diplomats Robert Macaire and Mark Sedwill, politicians Richard Onslow, 1st Baron Onslow and Mel Stride, as well as journalists Samira Ahmed (1986, English) and Anna Botting (1986, Geography). The elected Honorary Fellows: Faith Wainwright, MBE FREng (1980, Engineering) and the Hon Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth (1984, BCL).

In 2019, St Edmund Hall launched its 10 year strategy to improve access to higher education, increase the number of student scholarships, bursaries and academic fellowships at the Hall and improve its estate facilities and sustainability credentials. This was followed by the launch of HALLmarks, a £50 million campaign in 2022 to fundraise for a new student accommodation building at Norham Gardens in North Oxford as well as student support and fellowship endowment projects.

History
Similar to the University of Oxford itself, the precise date of establishment of St Edmund Hall is not certain; it is usually estimated at 1236, before any other college was formally established, though the founder from whom the Hall takes its name, locally-born Edmund of Abingdon, the first known Oxford Master of Arts and the first Oxford-educated Archbishop of Canterbury, lived and taught on the college site as early as the 1190s. The name St Edmund Hall (Aula Sancti Edmundi) first appears in a 1317 rental agreement. Before that, the house appeared as the ‘house of Cowley’ in rental agreements with the abbey. Thomas of Malsbury, the Vicar of Cowley, partially conveyed the site and its buildings to the abbey in 1270-71, having purchased it for eight pounds nine years previously. Cowley fully conveyed the property to the abbey in 1289-90 with an annuity of 'thirteen shillings and fourpence' (i.e. one "mark") paid to himself and eight shillings for his niece. During the thirteenth century, the university encouraged masters of the arts to rent properties to take in scholars as their tenants. The university preferred such arrangements over private lodgings, which it linked to loose living, poor discipline, public disorder and fighting. Moreover, university-approved accommodation run by approved principals, gave the university more oversight. Principals leased the halls annually and had to present themselves in front of the university's chancellor in St Mary's church yearly and guarantee that their hall would pay its rent. Halls whose principals undertook this formality earned recognition as academic halls. John de Cornuba leased the Hall from Osney Abbey, a large Augustinian institution in the neighbouring town of Osney, for 35 shillings annually. The Abbey's rent collections varied from 15 shillings for small institutions to four pounds for larger institutions. Judging by the Hall's annual rent sum, St Edmund's was a small to medium-sized academic hall at the time. However, by 1324-5 Osney Abbey had raised the Hall's rent to 46/8 while rents for other student hall's in the city had fallen. The rent increase indicates that the site expanded after 1318. Letters sent to Osney showed that the abbey gained two additional plots of land and buildings adjacent to the Hall and leased it to St Edmund Hall. The acquisition increased the Hall's capacity and also gave it access to the well which forms the centrepiece of the quadrangle.

St Edmund Hall began as one of Oxford's ancient Aularian houses, the medieval halls that laid the University's foundation, preceding the creation of the first colleges. As the only surviving medieval hall, its members are known as Aularians.

Lollardism
The college has a history of independent thought, which brought it into frequent conflict with both Church and State. During the late 14th and early 15th centuries, it was a bastion of John Wycliffe's supporters, pejoratively referred to as Lollards. This group of reformists challenged Papal supremacy, condemning practices such as Clerical celibacy, offerings to effigies, confession, and pilgrimage. They also believed that transubstantiation was tantamount to necromancy and felt that the Church's pursuit of arts and crafts was wasteful. However, it was their early Bible translations and belief that everyone should have access to scriptures which they were primarily known for. Ultimately, Lollardism would assimilate with Protestantism in the 1500s culminating in King Henry VIII's English Reformation.

William Taylor
The Hall's reformist activities caught the attention of Archbishop Thomas Arundel who opposed Lollardism. Arundel witnessed a sermon given by Principal William Taylor at St Paul's Cross in 1406 or 1407 and summoned him. However, Taylor failed to appear and was subsequently excommunicated for contumacy. Following his excommunication, Taylor embarked on a career as a Lollard preacher. In 1419/20 Archbishop Chichele absolved Taylor after he confessed to preaching whilst excommunicated. However, he was arrested soon thereafter for espousing unorthodox opinions in Bristol's Holy Trinity Church. Subsequently, Taylor was declared a relapsed heretic, handed over to the secular courts and burnt at the stake.

Peter Payne
Taylor's successor Peter Payne, also a Lollard, continued supporting Wyclif's opinions. It is believed that Payne was partly converted to Lollardism by John Purvey, one of Wycliffe's original supporters. Purvey advocated for vernacular translations of the Bible, and compelled Payne to defend Wycliff's translations of the scriptures. Payne drew hostility from Oxford's friars after allegedly purloining the University's common seal and using it to seal a letter sent to the ecclesiastical reformer Jan Hus in Prague. His letter claimed that Oxford and all of England barring the friars shared the same views that Hus's supporters (the Hussites) shared in Prague. The letter also commended Wyclif's life and teachings and because he sealed it with the University's seal the Hussites accepted it as genuine. Arundel deemed the college's activities dangerous enough to warrant an intervention and suppression. Arundel began by banning Oxford's schools from using Wycliffe's texts unless approved by a committee and ordered that all of Oxford's principals make monthly inquiries to make sure their scholars' views were orthodox. Next, he ordered each committee to go through Wyclif's writings and draw up a list of errors and heresys which he presented to the King. The King wrote to the university ordering that anyone holding reformist opinions be placed in prison. Payne fled the country after he left Oxford in 1412.

Seventeenth century onwards
In the late 17th and 18th centuries, St Edmund Hall incurred the wrath of the Crown for fostering non-jurors, men who remained loyal to the Jacobite succession of the House of Stuart and who refused to take the oath to their successors after 1688, whom they regarded as having usurped the British throne.

In 1877, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli appointed commissioners to consider and implement reform of the university and its colleges and halls. The commissioners concluded that the four remaining medieval halls were not viable and should merge with colleges on the death or resignation of the incumbent principals. In 1881, the commissioners issued University Statutes which provided for a partial merger of St Edmund with Queen's and for the other halls to merge with colleges.

By 1903, only St Edmund Hall remained. Principal Edward Moore wished to retire and become a resident canon in Canterbury Cathedral. Queen's College proposed an amended statute for complete rather than partial merger, which was rejected by the Congregation. In 1912 a statute was passed preserving the independence of the hall, which enabled Moore to retire. Queen Elizabeth II approved St Edmund Hall's charter of incorporation as a full college of the University of Oxford in 1957, although it deliberately retained its ancient title of "Hall". The Duke of Edinburgh presented the royal charter to the college in June 1958.

In 1978, women were first admitted as members of the Hall, with the first matriculations of women in 1979. In 2015, the college celebrated the matriculation of its 3000th female student with events and exhibitions, including the display of portraits of notable women who had taught, studied or worked at the Hall in the Dining Hall, a noticeable change from the styles of portraits in most colleges. Between 2015 and 2017, the proportion of UK undergraduates admitted to St Edmund Hall who were women was 42.3%.

Buildings and grounds
St Edmund Hall is located in central Oxford, on the north side of the High Street, off Queen's Lane. It borders New College to the North and the Carrodus Quad of The Queen's College to the south. The front quadrangle houses the porters' lodge, the Old Dining Hall, built in the 1650s, the college bar (the buttery), the chapel, the Old Library, offices and accommodation for students and Fellows.

Entrance
An engraving of the college coat of arms is found above the entrance to the college on Queen's Lane. As seen in this image, the coat of arms sits above the following Latin dedication "sanctus edmundus huius aulae lux", or "St Edmund, light of this Hall".

It is a very common practice within the University to use chronograms for dedications. When transcribed into Latin, they are written in such a way that an important date, usually that of a foundation or the dedication itself, is embedded in the text in Roman numerals.

In the above dedication, the text is rendered as

sanCtVs edMVndVs hVIVs aVLae LVX

and, in this case, adding the numerals gives:

C + V + M + V + V + V + I + V + V + L + L + V + X = 1246

(For this reading one must disregard the usual "subtractive" convention — according to which, for example, "IV" would be 4, not 6.) The year 1246 is the date of the canonisation of St Edmund of Abingdon.

Well
In the centre of the quadrangle is a medieval well, which was uncovered in 1926 during the construction of a new lecture room and accommodation. This well is believed to be the original from which St Edmund himself drew water. A new wellhead was added, with the inscription "haurietis aquas in gaudio de fontibus salvatoris", Latin for "with joy, draw water from the wells of salvation". These words, from Isaiah 12:3, are believed to be those spoken by St Edmund on his deathbed at Salisbury. A metal grate was added to the well to prevent injuries, but water can still be seen in the well at a depth of about 9 feet. Plans to add a wooden frame and bucket were scrapped to maintain the overall appearance of the quad.

Chapel
The east side of the Front Quad contains the chapel, consecrated in 1682. The chapel contains a stained glass window which is one of the earliest works by the artists Sir Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, and a painting above the altar named Supper at Emmaus, by Ceri Richards. Often described as a 'marmite painting' due to its anachronous style within the chapel, the painting commemorates the granting of the college's Royal Charter. The organ was built by Wood of Huddersfield in the 1980s. The St Edmund Hall Chapel Choir consists of eight choral scholars, two organ scholars and many other non-auditioning singers. The choir goes on two annual tours, including trips to Wells Cathedral in 2017, Pontigny, France, the burial place of St Edmund, in 2016 and Warsaw, Poland in 2015.

Old Library
Above the chapel is the Old Library. It was the last among Oxford colleges to chain its valuable books, but the first to have shelves against the walls. The Old Library is no longer the main library of the Hall, but is used for events and for research.

Library

The college library, the deconsecrated 12th-century church of St Peter-in-the-East, was converted in the 1970s, and includes the 14th century tower, which houses a tutor's room at the top. The oldest part of the library still standing is the crypt below the church, which dates from the 1130s. The library is situated in the original churchyard of St Peter-in-the-East. 40,000 volumes are housed within it to cater to the wide variety of courses offered at the Hall. While many of the graves have had their contents disinterred, several gravestones remain including one belonging to balloonist James Sadler, the first English aeronaut, and another which states the occupant died upon February 31. The garden contains a seated bronze sculpture of St Edmund as an impoverished student.

Modern buildings
In 1934, the Oxford-based architect Fielding Dodd completed the south side of the college's quadrangle, marking the 700th anniversary of Edmund of Abingdon's consecration as the Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1965–9, Kenneth Stevens and Partners, inheritors of Dodd's architectural practice, worked on a large programme of new building at the college, including a new dining hall, common rooms, teaching facilities, and undergraduate accommodation. These are at the rear of the main site in the Kelly, Emden, Besse, and Whitehall buildings. All first-year undergraduate students are guaranteed accommodation on the main site and many return for their third year after living out, usually in East Oxford, for the duration of their second year. The Wolfson Hall, the 20th-century dining hall, seats approximately 230 people and is used by students on a daily basis for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Annexes
The college also owns annexes at Norham Gardens, on Dawson Street and on Iffley Road.

The Norham Gardens annexe includes the Graduate Centre, a complex consisting of several large Victorian villas. This site was for many years the home of St Stephen's House, Oxford, before that institution moved to Iffley Road in 1980. The Norham Gardens annexe has the capacity to house most first-year graduate students and has its own common room, IT facilities, gardens and gym. In addition to student rooms, the Graduate Centre also has a quantity of faculty housing. The Dawson Street and Iffley Road annexes host undergraduates who do not live on the main site in pleasant en-suite, self-catering rooms.

Student life
As of 2017, the college has roughly 410 undergraduate, 300 graduate students and 75 Fellows, organised into three common rooms. The Junior Common Room (JCR), for undergraduates, and Middle Common Room (MCR), for postgraduates, both organise regular events, including a Freshers' week programme, dinners and film nights. The college is reputed for the strength of its 'Hall Spirit' with the semi-finals and finals of sports competitions regularly attended by in excess of 70 supporters.

Creative writing
The college has a weekly creative writing workshop, a termly poetry reading series, an online writers' forum and The St Edmund Hall Gallery, the annual student arts and literary magazine. College students also run 'TART' or 'Teddy Art' another arts and culture magazine.

The college runs an annual journalism competition for Oxford University students, in memory of alumnus and promising young journalist Philip Geddes, who died in the IRA bombing of Harrods in 1983. The college also hosts an annual lecture in his name.

Drama
St Edmund Hall has a lively drama society, the John Oldham Society, which worked in Cameroon in 2013 on a community drama project. In 2017-18 the College's entry into Drama Cuppers, the satirical 'Oswald French', written and starring Hugh Shepherd-Cross, reached the final round, and two students directed and produced a play called God of Carnage, which sold out its entire run at the Burton Taylor Studio. In 2019-20 the John Oldham Society staged a production of The Importance of Being Earnest. The production sold out and was very well received, with the profits being donated to Stonewall.

Music
The College has one of the largest non-auditioning college choirs in Oxford, which is anchored by two Organ Scholars and eight Choral Scholars, under the direction of James Whitbourn, the Director of Music, until his death in 2024. The choir performs an evensong every Sunday and on special occasions, including the Feast Day of St Edmund and the popular 'Carols in the Quad' event at Christmas. The Choir take part in an annual exchange with Fitzwillam College, Cambridge, a UK residential (previous destinations have included Wells and Worcester Cathedrals), and visit Pontigny, France on tour each year to perform.

During Hilary term 2018 several events were held, including the Intercollegiate Evensong at the University Church; the joint service with the Hall's sister college, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge; and the joint Ash Wednesday service with University College. The term ended with an exploration of Lenten music through Buxtehude's extraordinary cycle of cantatas: Membra Jesu Nostri. The Choir was joined by members of the world-class period instrument ensemble Instruments of Time & Truth for a powerful performance of the first three cantatas in the cycle.

Sport
St Edmund Hall participates in a large number of sports including rugby, football, rowing, tennis, cricket, mixed lacrosse, netball, hockey, swimming, gymnastics, and basketball, among others. Since becoming a college in 1957, the Men's Rugby Union team has won over half the Cuppers Tournaments it has ever entered (33 wins from 62 attempts). As a part of a team consisting of several colleges, Teddy Hall won women's rugby Cuppers in 2015–2016. In 2016–2017, St Edmund Hall won men's football and cricket Cuppers and its women's first boat and men's second boat won blades in Bumps. In 2017-2018 the College recorded victories in Men's Basketball (by 74-49 in the final), Swimming (for the third consecutive year), Men's Rugby, Women's Rugby (joint with Mansfield and Pembroke), Rounders (after an unbeaten season), and Pool. Men's Rugby was won 20-17 over St Peter's College. Cricket Cuppers was almost retained. Finals were also reached by the Men's 2nd XI, the Mixed Hockey team, the Tennis Club, and the 2nd VII went unbeaten in their netball league. Strong performances are also consistently recorded in men's and women's hockey, badminton and canoe polo.

The St Edmund Hall Boat Club held the men's headship in Summer Eights five times between 1959 and 1965 and women's headship from 2006 to 2009. The SEHBC women currently sit second on the river behind Christchurch in Summer Eights. SEHBC had success at the Henley Royal Regatta during its era of dominance in Oxford rowing in the 1960s.

 * In 1958 an SEH coxless IV were the losing finalists in the Ladies' Challenge Plate, losing to Keble by 3 lengths.

 * In 1959 a joint SEH/Lincoln College VIII won the Stewards' Challenge Cup, beating GS Moto Guzzi of Italy easily.

 * In 1960 another joint SEH/Lincoln College VIII were the losing finalists in the Stewards' Challenge Cup, being beaten by Barn Cottage BC by 4 lengths.

 * In 1961 an SEH coxless IV won the Visitors' Challenge Cup, beating St Catherine's College, Cambridge by 1½ lengths.

 * In 1963 the 1st VIII were the losing finalists in the Ladies' Challenge Plate, losing to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst by ½ length.

 * In 1965, SEHBC had two victories; the 1st VIII won The Ladies' Challenge Plate, beating Jesus College, Cambridge by ¾ length, and an SEHBC coxless IV won the Visitors' Challenge Cup, beating Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge by 2 lengths.

In 2023, the Hall won Octopush, underwater Hockey Cuppers for the first time. The St Edmund Hall A swimming team won the Cuppers in 2023.

The college celebrates the students’ successes in sports, arts and other extra-curricular activities at the annual Achievements Dinner. Cuppers winning teams are also rewarded with their photograph in the college bar, the walls of which are now crammed with teams dating from the late nineteenth century to the present day. The college also awards the Luddington Prize to undergraduate students who manage to achieve both a First Class degree in finals and a university Blue.

Outreach
The College has a very active outreach and access programme, employing two full-time staff and supported by a team of over 30 volunteer Student Ambassadors. Working with schools in the assigned link areas, including Leicestershire, Rutland, Derby and Derbyshire, the College hosts visits from school groups and was one of the first colleges to take student ambassadors on an access roadshow. This saw four students and the Schools Liaison Officer visit nine schools in 4 days in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight in 2016 (previous link regions) and continues to take place annually. The College since has expanded its provision to include a second roadshow in collaboration with Pembroke College, Cambridge, visiting schools and colleges in Leicestershire, which first took place in November 2018. In 2023, the College launched its Unlock Residential programme which aims to increase the number of applications from its link areas.

Formal Hall and college graces
The usual grace given before Formal Hall, as said by the fellow presiding at the dinner, is: ": Benedictus Benedicat per Jesum Christum Dominum Nostrum
 * (May the Blessed One bless [this food] through Jesus Christ Our Lord)"

The post cibum grace, given following pudding, is a slight variant on the above:": Benedicto Benedicatur per Jesum Christum Dominum Nostrum
 * (May the Blessed One be blessed through Jesus Christ Our Lord)"

To which the assembly responds Amen. More extended (or sung) forms of the grace are sometimes given but these are limited to special occasions, such as the Feast of St Edmund, a formal held each year to commemorate the namesake of the hall.

The traditional college toast is occasionally also said at dinners, and is simply "Floreat Aula", Latin for "May the Hall Flourish".

Other notable figures

 * Edmund of Abingdon
 * Jeremy Paxman, a Fellow of the College by Special Election.

Principals

 * 1405–1406 William Taylor, theologian, priest, excommunicated and executed as a Lollard
 * 1410–1414 Peter Payne, theologian, diplomat, Lollard and Taborite
 * 1565– Thomas Lancaster, Protestant clergyman, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh
 * 1609-1610 John Waldron
 * 1610–1631 John Rawlinson, clergyman
 * 1658–1676 Thomas Tully
 * 1685–1707 John Mill, theologian
 * 1751–1760 George Fothergill
 * 1722–1740 Henry Felton, clergyman and academic
 * 1740–1751 Thomas Shaw
 * 1864–1903 Edward Moore
 * 1913–1920 Henry Williams, Bishop of Carlisle (1920–1946)
 * 1914–1918 Leonard Hodgson (Vice-Principal)
 * 1920–1928 G.B. Allen
 * 1928 George B. Cronshaw
 * 1929–1951 Alfred Brotherston Emden
 * 1951–1979 J. N. D. Kelly, clergyman
 * 1979–1982 Sir Ieuan Maddock
 * 1982–1996 J C B Gosling
 * 1996–1998 Sir Stephen Tumim
 * 1999–2009 Michael Mingos, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry
 * 2009–2018 Keith Gull, FRS
 * 2018–present Baroness Willis of Summertown

title: St Edmund Hall, Oxford


text:
St Catherine's College, Oxford

St Catherine's College (colloquially called St Catz or Catz) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. In 1974, it was also one of the first men's colleges to admit women. It has 528 undergraduate students, 385 graduate students and 37 visiting students as of December 2020, making it one of the largest colleges in either Oxford or Cambridge.

Designed by Danish architect Arne Jacobsen, the college was built in an egalitarian architectural style that maximises the number of rooms, for academically qualified students who lacked the financial resources to study at Oxford. In September 2023, access to areas of the college was restricted due to safety concerns around the use of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).

The college developed out of the university's St Catherine's Society; it was granted full status as a college in 1962 by the historian Alan Bullock, who became the first master of the college, and later vice-chancellor of the university. The current master is Kersti Börjars, who took over the role in 2020 and is the college's first female master.

History
St Catherine's College, Oxford traces its origins to 1868. In its first iteration, it was established as a delegacy for Scholares nulli Collegio vel Aulae ascripti ('Scholars enrolled in no college or hall'), by university statute on 11 June 1868. This delegacy, informally known as the "Delegacy for Unattached Students", was created in response to the recommendation of a Royal Commission in 1850, that the university be open to a "larger and poorer" sector of the population. The delegacy, by allowing students to enrol without belonging to a college, would enable less affluent men to gain an Oxford education without the costs of college membership.

The delegacy appointed two of its stipendiaries, George Kitchin and George S. Ward, to be known as "Censors", to oversee the education and welfare of the students. Nineteen students matriculated in October 1868 as Scholares nulli Collegio ascripti and were joined throughout the year by another forty, bringing the total number in the first year to 59. Growing quickly, by 1872 the delegacy had admitted 330 students. By 1914, more than 4,000 men had matriculated as non-collegiate students. In 1884, the delegacy was renamed the "Delegacy for Non-Collegiate Students".

In its first days, a room in the university's Old Clarendon Building was allocated for the operations of the delegacy, and with gifts of books from several donors, a library for the unattached students was installed there. These accommodations soon proved inadequate and in 1888, the delegacy was moved to a building in High Street next to the Examination Schools. Here the non-collegiate students, as they were known after 1884, had a library in its own dedicated space and two lecture halls. There was an administration office and rooms for the Censors and tutors. Designed by T. G. Jackson, this building is now the Ruskin School of Art. In 1936, the delegacy moved again, from its outgrown High Street premises to the limestone buildings on St Aldates, south of Christ Church, Oxford which are now part of the Oxford University's Faculty of Music.

By 1956, the society had developed many of the characteristics of an Oxford college and the delegates decided to formalise this change in status by obtaining approval to turn it into a fully residential college within the University of Oxford. After acquiring 8 acre from Merton College, Oxford on part of Holywell Great Meadow for £57,690, monies were sought from the University Grants Committee who also agreed to supply £250,000 towards the building, and additional funds up to £400,000 for all facilities. By 1960, Alan Bullock raised a further £1,000,000 with assistance from two industrialists, Alan Wilson (whom he met by chance on the RMS Queen Mary) and Sir Hugh Beaver. After a total expenditure of £2.5 million, the college opened in 1962. In 1974, St Catherine's was one of the first men's colleges to admit women as full members, the others being Brasenose, Jesus College, Hertford and Wadham.

In keeping with its complete history, including its earliest incarnation, the college celebrated its 150th anniversary in the academic year 2018–2019, coinciding with the 2018 Ball 'Continuum'. The 50th anniversary of the establishment of the College itself, as a college, was celebrated in 2012.

College name
In 1931, the delegacy officially acquired the name, "St Catherine's Society", with the current spelling. Variations of St Catharine having been used by the students for their sporting teams and various clubs since the 1870s, the name was already strongly associated with the delegacy. First forming a social club in April 1869, the students called it the "Clarendon University Club", taking that name from the Old Clarendon Building where the delegacy had been allocated a room. The students soon expanded their organised activities. By 1874 they began a more comprehensive association, which they called the St Catharine's [sic] Club, after its headquarters, the hall where they dined and held meetings. St Catharine's Hall had long been associated with the saint, having been built c. 1520 as a chapel, popularly called St Catherine's Chapel, (though officially "Chapel of Our Lady at Smith Gate"). Although deconsecrated, the 16th-century appellation of "St Catharine's" remained attached to the site throughout its later history. The building's address at the time of the Club's tenancy was 29 Broad Street; it fronted, though, onto Catte Street, also known as Catherine Street from some point in the late 19th century until 1930—and first recorded as Kattestreete c. 1210, Catte in 1402, Cate or Kate in the 17th century, and Cat or Catte again in the 1800s, the street's name enhancing the association with Catherine.

In this way, the college became indirectly associated with the saint, Catherine of Alexandria. Despite the initially accidental relationship, St Catherine is celebrated as the college's patron saint "with a special Catz Night dinner... at the end of which a giant Catherine wheel is lit in the quad". Other elements of this can be seen in the college blazon, which depicts four Catherine wheels, one of St Catherine's attributes. While religious iconography can also be seen today in some of the college's symbols, the college's origins were largely secular.

Original buildings
The college is located to the east of central Oxford, on the banks of the River Cherwell. Its buildings in glass, brick, and concrete, by the Danish architect Arne Jacobsen, marry modern materials with a traditional Oxford college layout centred on a quadrangle. Jacobsen designed everything, including the furniture, cutlery, lampshades, and the college gardens, down to the choice of fish species for the pond.

The original St Catherine's buildings are recognised as one of the world's most distinguished examples of modernist design, described by architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner as "a perfect piece of architecture", and said to have been the architect's personal favourite among his own works. Jacobsen's designs for the college have been the subject of various art and design exhibitions. The original college buildings received a Grade I listing in 1993. In 2020, the college gardens, also designed by Jacobsen, were upgraded to the highest level of protection by Historic England for historical and design interest.

Jacobsen's plans for the college did not include a chapel, which is unusual among Oxford colleges: St Cross Church on the corner of Manor Road and Longwall Street served this purpose before its decommission in 2008. The St Catherine's Christmas carol concert is now held in Harris Manchester College's chapel. The college has a bell tower, particularly visible since no college building is more than three storeys high. An extra floor was reputedly planned for most accommodation blocks, but due to regulations concerning safe building on marshland, this was removed from the final design. The entrance to the college by the water garden was remodelled by Sir Philip Howell in 1968. St Catherine's has a number of lecture theatres and seminar rooms, a music house, two student computer rooms, a small gym, squash courts, a punt house, a Grade I listed bike shed and among the most spacious common rooms in Oxford. There are also additional purpose-built conference facilities with lecture theatres, meeting rooms and bar, music room, and car parking available for non-students. The dining hall, which seats 350 diners, has the largest capacity of any Oxford college.

St Catherine's also has a library with over 55,000 volumes, which is used mainly by undergraduates in all the disciplines taught at the college, as well as 14 computer terminals. Law students have additional resources located in the college law library, which is in the Bernard Sunley building. Most tutorials are carried out in college, though some undergraduates may be sent to other colleges. For additional resources, the college is next to the Social Science Library, Oxford and Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, which matriculated students are free to use.

The majority of St Catherine's buildings are in the form of staircases that open directly onto the quad(s) outside; these are filled with student rooms and office space. There is little indoor space in the college and St Catherine's favours a minimalist, rather austere environment, though still comfortable. Student rooms are light and spacious, notable for their curtain wall glazing. The Built Environment Trust, and its public face The Building Centre, in 2021 named the college's buildings as among the 90 most influential UK buildings or public spaces from the last 90 years.

RAAC concrete
In September 2023 following reviews of the college site for reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) it was discovered a number of buildings contained RAAC. This has prompted the temporary closure of many of the communal spaces such as the JCR, Hall, kitchens and library.

Extensions
The college was first expanded in 1983 by Knud Holscher, Jacobsen's assistant. It was also extended by Stephen Hodder in two phases, the first from 1994 to 1995 and the second from 2002 to 2005. The first phase included 54 student rooms and the second phase included 132 student rooms, a new porters' lodge and four seminar rooms. These new buildings form a second quad called 'New Quad' (in comparison to the Jacobsen-designed 'Old Quad'), which is largely used as second-year student accommodation.

Graduate building
In 2017, Purcell Architects gained planning permission for a further extension at the college. The facilities aimed to resemble Jacobsen's original designs and was built on the college's last available development space. Purcell consulted with Stephen Hodder, who constructed the additional buildings on site during the 1994 and 2004 extensions, when designing the centre. The Ainsworth Graduate Centre is named in honor of Roger Ainsworth, the previous Master of the college. Construction started in July 2018, and was completed in 2019. The centre opened in March 2020 and includes seminar rooms and space for academic works. It also expanded graduate accommodation by creating three new staircases, which contain 78 single rooms with en-suite facilities and a new common room. This is in addition to 42 single rooms, with shared bathroom and cooking facilities, in St Catherine's House, which is off-site on Bath Street.

Student life
St Catherine's has one of the largest undergraduate and graduate intakes among Oxford colleges, admitting 215 graduate students in the 2018–2019 academic year. There is a college bar, as well as a Junior Common Room (JCR) and a Middle Common Room (MCR), which was relocated to the Ainsworth Graduate Centre in 2020 (it was previously located in the Bernard Sunley building).

The JCR is run by a committee of 25 undergraduate students, led by the President and elected by the rest of the student body through 'hustings', or a general Q&A (question and answer) session. The committee fulfills a wide range of duties, aimed at organising events, such as Freshers' week, and providing support to the students. Open meetings are held fortnightly, during which people discuss how to improve the JCR. All undergraduate members are automatically members of the JCR, unless they expressly state that they wish not to be. Honorary membership is also rarely extended to others, with one awarded every five years: honorary members include Robbie Williams and Bradley Walsh. The Catz JCR is financially independent from the College, following a financial committee meeting. Similarly, the MCR is composed of graduate students, visiting postgraduate students, fourth-year undergraduate students and mature (over the age of 21) full-time undergraduate students, who also have JCR membership. It is run by a committee led by two co-presidents, which organises several events such as an annual garden party. The MCR also has benefits, such as a separate kitchen and the exclusive use of an enclosed garden.

The college celebrates its patron saint each year with a special Catz Night dinner, attended by junior and senior members of the college. Every three years the college also holds a ball, usually off-site due to the problem of securing the college's perimeter sufficiently for insurance purposes. St Catherine's is also known for its more modern approaches, such as by not usually requiring students to wear gowns for dinners and voting to end the tradition of standing when the Master enters the hall at formal dinner, although most students still continue in this practice out of respect. The College also holds fortnightly social events called 'Entz', which are usually themed and hosted in the JCR and bar, and an annual Catz Artz Week which showcases creative talents.

The college also has several sport, music and other facilities available on the college site, including squash courts, pool tables, a free gymnasium, a punt house, and theatres. The music house on site is equipped with a grand piano and harpsichord. There are also several clubs and societies available, such as the music society, orchestras, choirs, and subject societies. The dramatic society often performs plays and musicals, including recent adaptations of Rent and Chicago. St Catz has a friendly college rivalry with Magdalen, expressed in sports and in a joke JCR 'declaration of war' in 2013.

Accommodation
The college is able to offer three-year accommodation for students, with all first years on site. Most first and third years live in the Jacobsen-designed 'Old Quad', the original buildings, while the second years live in the 'New Quad', built during the 1995–2005 extensions. There is a kitchen in every corridor, generally shared between eight to ten people. Bathrooms containing four showers and two toilets are shared between groups of ten people in the Old Quad, while every bedroom in the New Quad is en-suite. Rooms are allocated randomly for first year students, while groups of four to six students in second- and third-year ballot together for rooms. All rooms cost the same in rent.

Academic reputation
In 2019, the college ranked 2nd in the Norrington Table, with a score of 77.93% and with 68 out of 145 total Finalists achieving first-class honours. In 2018, the college ranked 3rd with a score of 78.15% and with around 50% of Finalists achieving first-class honors, climbing from 26th place in 2017 when it had a score of 68.68%.

Scholarships, awards and outreach
The College offers several college prizes and research grants. All College scholarships and prizes are awarded based on academic, social and/or cultural contributions. For instance, the Hart Prize is awarded for the best essay for a historical subject, the Thomas Jefferson Prize is awarded to the North American student who has contributed most to the College, and the Smith Award is awarded for services to drama or music.

The College also awards the Wallace Watson Scholarship each year, one of the most prestigious and generous research and travel scholarships at the University of Oxford. The Wallace Watson Scholarship enables undergraduate and graduate students to undertake research fieldwork or remote travel during their time at Oxford. Additionally, the college offers the Emilie Harris Award for those aiming to help or work with the under-privileged communities, the Antony Edwards Bursary for Spanish cultural or language studies, and the Patricia Knapp Travel Award for travel with a medical purpose.

The College is also involved in many fully-funded outreach programmes, such as the Catalyst Programme, which is a sustained contact model during which schools may visit the college and outreach staff may provide workshops on applications, picking A-Levels and exploring careers. The purpose of the programme is to increase the success rate of applicants. The College also has ties with Northern Ireland through the Northern Ireland Residential Summer School, which allow Northern Irish students to visit the college and experience life as an Oxford students, while teachers may have a Q&A session with tutors. The College also has partnerships with several other schemes and charities, such as Target Oxbridge, UNIQ and the Pathways Programme.

Rowing
St Catherine's College Boat Club is the rowing club of the college. British Olympic gold medallists Sir Matthew Pinsent and Andrew Triggs Hodge, and silver medallist Colin Smith all rowed for the college.

In popular culture
St Catherine's College has served as a filming location for several films and television series. It featured as 'Lovelace College' in Season 4 of the British crime series Endeavour. The British spy drama Chokepoint was filmed in locations around the College, such as the SCR and the Bernard Sunley Building. Director SG Smith said it was a good location as the college was "a good fit with the overall aesthetic of the show". In Season 4, episode 6 of The Crown, the Hall at St Catherine's serves as the venue of a state reception in Hobart, Tasmania, attended by Prince Charles and Princess Diana in their 1983 tour of Australia.

List of censors
A list of the censors of the Delegacy for Unattached Students, the Delegacy for Non-Collegiate Students and St Catherine's Society.

 * 1868–1883: George Kitchin
 * 1868–1881: George Sturton Ward
 * 1883–1887: William Jackson
 * 1888–1919: Richard William Massy Pope
 * 1919–1930: James Bernard Baker
 * 1930–1952: Victor John Knight Brook
 * 1952–1962: Alan Bullock

List of masters

 * 1962–1981: Alan Bullock; first master
 * 1981–1988: Patrick Nairne
 * 1988–1994: Brian Smith
 * 1994–2000: Raymond Plant, Baron Plant of Highfield
 * 2000–2002: Sir Peter Williams
 * 2002–2019: Roger Ainsworth
 * 2019–2020: Peter Battle (pro-master)
 * 2020–2024: Kersti Börjars

List of Christensen Fellows
Christensen Fellowships are awarded to distinguished academic visitors who are members of their national academy – equivalent to the Royal Society and the British Academy in the UK – or likely to attain that standard if at an earlier stage in their academic career.
 * Söhnke M. Bartram
 * Christoph Bode
 * MacDonald P. Jackson
 * John F. Helliwell
 * Vijay Mishra
 * Gjertrud Schnackenberg
 * K. G. Subramanyan
 * Reza S. Abhari

List of Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professors
The Chair of Contemporary Theatre, founded through a grant from the Mackintosh Foundation at St Catherine's College in 1990, aims to promote interest in, and the study and practice of, contemporary theatre. The Visiting Professorship is awarded to a new chair on an annual basis. Throughout their tenure, the holder of this chair usually delivers two public lectures, and one, or sometimes more, smaller more intimate student workshops, which are usually conducted at the College.

 * 2023: Gregory Doran
 * 2021: Adjoa Andoh
 * 2019: Deborah Warner
 * 2017: Sir Tom Stoppard
 * 2016: Claude-Michel Schönberg
 * 2014: Simon Russell Beale CBE
 * 2013: Stephen Fry
 * 2012: Sir Michael Boyd
 * 2011: Meera Syal MBE
 * 2010: Sir Trevor Nunn CBE
 * 2009: Michael Frayn
 * 2008: Kevin Spacey
 * 2006: Sir Patrick Stewart OBE
 * 2005: Phyllida Lloyd CBE
 * 2004: Patrick Marber
 * 2003: Sir Tim Rice
 * 2002: Stephen Daldry CBE
 * 2001: John Napier
 * 2000: Sir Nicholas Hytner
 * 1999: Dame Diana Rigg DBE
 * 1998: Thelma Holt CBE
 * 1997: Sir Richard Eyre CBE
 * 1996: Richard Attenborough (Lord Attenborough) CBE
 * 1995: Arthur Miller
 * 1994: Sir Peter Shaffer CBE
 * 1993: Michael Codron CBE
 * 1992: Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE
 * 1991: Sir Ian McKellen CH CBE
 * 1990: Stephen Sondheim

title: St Catherine's College, Oxford