Oxford venues
Wadham College
Wadham is Oxford’s largest college and has been hosting professional open air theatre since 1992. The idyllic walled Fellows garden is the setting for the evening’s entertainment.
Wadham College was founded by Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham in the reign of King James I in 1610 and so celebrates its 400th anniversary this year.
Nicholas Wadham, a member of an ancient Somerset family, died in 1609 leaving his fortune to endow a college at Oxford. The hard work of translating intentions into reality fell on his widow, Dorothy, a formidable lady of 75. She fought all claims of Nicholas’s relations, lobbied at court, negotiating the purchase of a site and drew up the college statutes.
Notable members of the college in its early years include Robert Blake, Cromwell’s admiral and founder of British sea-power in the Mediterranean, and Christopher Wren. More latterly Sir Thomas Beecham was an undergraduate in 1897, though soon abandoning Oxford for his musical career, Cecil Day-Lewis, later Poet-Laureate, came up in 1923 and Michael Foot M.P. in 1931. Among recent members have been Dr Rowan Williams, the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Melvyn Bragg, broadcaster and novelist and this year’s OSC Director Mick Gordon.
Originally a series of orchards and market-gardens carved out from the property of the Augustinian priory, their appearance and configuration have been significantly modified over the course of the last four hundred years in order to reflect their constantly-changing functions and aesthetic purpose.
The land was shaped, in particular, by two major periods of planning. Gardens were first created under Warden Wilkins (1648-59) as a series of formal rectangles laid out around a (then fashionable) mound which was, in turn, surmounted by a figure of Atlas. These gardens were notable not least for their collection of mechanical contrivances (including a talking statue and a rainbow-maker), a number of obelisks and a Doric temple. Under Warden Wills (1783-1806), the terrain was then radically remodeled and landscaped and became notable for a distinguished collection of trees.
Wadham College
Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3PN
www.wadham.ox.ac.uk