BRASENOSE COLLEGE


"Of the colleges of Oxford, Exeter is the most
proper for western, Queen's for northern, and
Brasenose for north-western men."
FULLER, /Worthies/.

[Plate XV. Bresenose College, Quadrangle and Radcliffe Library]

Brasenose college is in the very centre of the University, fronting
as it does on Radcliffe Square, where Gibbs' beautiful dome supplies
the Bodleian with a splendid reading-room. And this site has always
been consecrated to students; where the front of Brasenose now stands
ran School Street, leading from the old /Scholae Publicae/, in which
the disputations of the Mediaeval University were held, to St. Mary's
Church.

It was from this neighbourhood that some Oxford scholars migrated to
Stamford in 1334, in order to escape one of the many Town and Gown
rows, which rendered Mediaeval Oxford anything but a place of quiet
academic study. They seem to have carried with them the emblem of
their hall, a fine sanctuary knocker of brass, representing a lion's
head, with a ring through its nose; this knocker was installed at a
house in Stamford, which still retains the name it gave, "Brasenose
Hall." The knocker itself was there till 1890, when the College
recovered the relic (it now hangs in the hall). The students were