Where to start! Christ Church is the university I was personally attending. It's one of the largest of the Oxford Schools. During the English Civil War, the king made Christ Church is personal headquarters, while his wife was staying down the street at another college. Christ Church was started back by a guy named Wolsey, pre 15th Century. He started what is now known as the Great Quad. A church already existed inside the area he wanted for his building, so he merely knocked down the front of the church and joined the remaining church with the walls. He died before he could finish his work, which would have included the complete destruction of the church. King Henry the Eighth took over the school then. The school was named after him for a while, before he changed the name. That name is still in effect today for all legal documents. It is something along the lines of 'the Dean and Chapter of the King's School of .. " blah blah blah. Subsequent parts of the school were added at different times, in different centuries. The chapel itself is the oldest however. The spot it is built on has had three churches built on it. From 1002, the St. Brice's Day Massacre, was the first church on the spot. The townspeople burnt down the church, and the Danes taking refuge inside of it. Another church was built on the spot. It was in that church that St. Frideswide became a saint. This church was destroyed in the religious reformation in England and St. Frideswide's relics were lost. When the new church was built, the remains of St. Frideswide were found down a well and her shrine rebuilt.

One of the instructors at the school, a math instructor actually, named Lewis Carroll wrote a series of stories for the daughter of the Dean, a girl named Alice Liddell. The garden that Alice's nursery window overlooked was the Wonderland Garden. The tree in that garden is the Cheshire cat's tree. This door is the door leading to that garden. Christ Church has a stained glass window in its hall that has Alice figures in it. Some disturbing facts however.. apparently, Lewis Carroll liked pretty little girls. Alot. He also liked to have naked pictures of them. He also stopped being their friend when they got too big. Never friends with little boys, no, only little girls. Now, this isn't stuff I'm making up, I heard it at a Lewis Carroll talk at Christ Church itself. The speaker didn't put any connotations on this, she just basically spoke what is known about this aspect of Lewis Carroll and moved to a new subject.

Now, don't you have an urge to reread 'Alice in Wonderland'?

Here's another interesting fact about the Liddell's. The eldest daughter's face is in one of the chapel stained glass windows. The Liddell Family grave can still be found behind the church in a small graveyard.

There is a garden in the back, called the Masters Garden. It's usually only open to the tutors, but while we were there, they had it open for the students as well. A very large garden, with a beautiful panorama of the city, as you can see. A person could sit on the grass and read, or take out the croquet set and play a game of croquet, or just take a nice walk in the morning. The gates for it close at 9:30PM however. And if you get locked inside the garden, you have to shout for the porters to come and open the gates for you. One day, my friend and I had been sitting in there. It was one of our first days there. Around 9 or so, we decide to go back home. We go to the gate and *clink* we can't open it. Of course, we try not to panick and succeed somewhat. We call a bit for someone to come open the gate. No one comes. Then we see a gate guard approaching from outside the gates. He asks what we're doing. We explain our situation. He lets himself into the garden and acts all gruff. We're obviously putting such a crimp in his day. Then he tries the gate and it opens! He then chuckles and says, 'Girls,' and I explain that we had tried the handle, we didn't know you had to twist and lift and push at the same time. Silly us. We smile and go on our own way. Phew. Needless to say, we never went into the garden again at night. Though just before breakfast each morning, I would run around the garden.

And every morning I would nearly run dead smack into that! Yeesh! I don't even know what plant it is, but I decided that I would take a photo of it. Equally, I don't know what type of bush this is on the right, but I thought it was very pretty, very pretty indeed. Overall, the Masters Garden was an amazing place to go to. One day, I saw a couple walking their cat without a leash in the garden. That certainly wasn't a Cheshire Cat!

© 1997 kithan@hotmail.com

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