St Cross College, Oxford

Although St Cross College is a relative new-comer amongst the colleges and halls of Oxford, it has already accumulated a surprising volume of material in its archives. Some of this relates to the history of the land on St Cross Road, where the College was first located and from which it takes its name, and the frontage on St Giles, where it is now happily ensconced. Most of the archives concern the people responsible for the founding and development of the College in its early days and the everyday running of the College thereafter. It is a pleasure and a privilege to be able to work with this material and to help preserve it for future use. I am of course indebted to the organization and hard work of my predecessor, Alan Coates, who in turn continued the archival system set in place by his predecessor, Paul Morgan.

Following a preliminary survey of the archives, I have decided to begin my tenure as archivist by giving special attention to the photographic materials, as well as miscellaneous material such as architectural plans. Such material has not in the past been catalogued but rather set to one side for future development. I feel it is now time to properly protect and catalogue the surprisingly large number of photographs and other miscellaneous material. In addition to the yearly College photographs (some unlabelled!) and prints of historical photographs of St Giles (see below), there are over 500 photographs taken at special social events virtually all of which are unlabelled. My intention is to scan all the photographs and then make prints after placing a number alongside each person shown in a photograph. At this point I hope to invite all members of St Cross (past and present) to join in and help identify the events and the people so that we will have a useful record of the early decades of this College.

On a personal note, I was pleased to find in the St Cross archives some early maps of the land alongside St Giles on which it is indicated that in the 19th century the Friends’ Meeting House was on the land now occupied by the garden outside the south wing of St Cross, while in the 17th century the Meeting House was where the Oriental Institute now stands. This particularly interested me because a distant relative of mine, one Richard Waln (d. 1698), from one of the earliest families in Yorkshire to convert to Quakerism, established in 1683 in his home in Cheltenham the first Friends’ meeting in this area (which became the Abington Particular Meeting or the Abington Monthly Meeting) from which he then established two other meetings houses (including that known as the Oxford meeting). His brother, Nicholas Waln, incidentally, accompanied William Penn on his first voyage to Pennsylvania and was instrumental in founding the Quaker community there. And so when I saw this on the map in our archives, it seemed especially fitting that I now find myself working with this archival material and looking out onto the garden where once the meeting house stood.

Emilie Savage-Smith
Archivist

College site frontage 1899Figure 1. The corner of St Giles and Alfred Street (now Pusey Street) as it was in June of 1899, showing the buildings occupying part of the site where Pusey House and St Cross College now stand. At the corner was a photographic studio and picture-framing shop, while in the house to the left a Miss Sara Anne Patchett ran university and family lodgings. (original photograph in Oxfordshire County Library, No 28011)

College site frontage 1911Figure 2. The frontage of the site of St Cross College and Pusey House as it was in May of 1911. Pusey Street (formerly Alfred Street) is at the extreme right; the gateway on the left is now part of the Blackfriars' site. Construction of Pusey House (with the demolition of these buildings) began shortly after this photograph was taken. (original photograph in Bodleian library, MS Top. Oxon. d. 500, fol. 61)