mater/.

The founder died in 1277, so that none of the college buildings were
complete in his time, except perhaps the treasury, which, with its
high-pitched roof of stone, lies in the opposite corner of the Mob
Quad to that shown in our picture. Why the Quad is called "The Mob
Quad," nobody knows. As was fitting, the chapel was the first part of
the college to be finished--about 1300--and it is a splendid specimen
of early Geometrical Gothic; it retains a little of the old glass,
given by one of the early fellows.

The north side of the Mob Quad, which is shown in our picture, is
very little later than the Chapel, and the whole of the Quad was
finished before 1400; the rooms in it have been the homes of Oxford
men for more than five centuries. It is sad to think that so unique a
building was almost destroyed in the middle of the nineteenth
century, by the zeal of "reformers"; it was actually condemned to be
pulled down, to make way for modern buildings, but, fortunately,
there was an irregularity in the voting. Mr. G. C. Brodrick, then a
young fellow, later the Warden of the college, insisted on the matter
being discussed again at a later meeting, and at this the Mob Quad
was saved by a narrow majority. "He will go to Heaven for it," as
Corporal Trim said of the English Guards, who saved his broken
regiment at Steinkirk.

The "reformers" of Merton had to be content with cutting down their
beautiful "Grove" and spoiling the finest view in Oxford by erecting
the ugliest building which Mid-Victorian taste inflicted on the
University.