Oxford

I must have done well in my entrance exams because I won a scholarship.  A small group of us traveled to Oxford for the interview.  It was very cold at the time, and the only form of heat in the room I had been billeted in was a one-bar electric fire set into the wall.  I remember huddling around the fire with many layers of clothing and still feeling cold.  The chairs were upholstered with some hard, coarse material which had as much give in them as coconut door matting. And the nearest toilet and wash-room was down a flight of stairs and across the quad.  I understand that Oriel College has now gone soft with en-suite showers and central heating.

In spite of these (literal) inconveniences I look back at my time in Oxford with great thankfulness.

On going up for my first year I was allocated a room in the north-west corner of the Rhodes building, with the same one-bar electric fire, and nearest loo outside in the quad arrangement. But bliss, oh bliss: in the basement at the foot of our stairwell a wash-room with a concrete floor, several baths long enough to lay down in, open-plan showers with huge shower-roses supplied by 3/4" pipe work, and lashings of hot water.  Everything in one room, open-plan style, but that didn't faze me. To this day this sort of arrangement has been my prototype for the ideal bathroom. Regrettably no one else agrees.

The Rhodes Building - my room was on the first floor to the left

My next door neighbour, Neil Mapley, was a self confessed pyromaniac. More to suppress the traffic noise than to create a warmer environment our windows had sliding "double" glazing panels on the inside.  I remember Neil putting bits of paper in the space between the window proper and this sliding panel and lighting them - I tried to stop him...  I enjoyed several walking holidays and one sailing holiday with him: he's the one with the generous mop of hair in my pictures below. Sadly Neil was killed in a motor-bike accident in Africa a number of years ago.

 Neil Mapley and Mike Attwood descending Helvellyn to the Striding Edge

Neil Mapley and Ranolph Poole on the Norfolk Broads

The 2011 edition of the Oriel College Record article "100 years of the Rhodes Building: its creation and a re-appraisal" reveals that the building was opened in 1911.  I had always assumed it was much older.

Recent picture of the front of the Rhodes Building - my room's window is highlighted

The building is famed for its statues with Cecil himself in South African garb taking the highest position. The inscription beneath his statue reads (when translated from the Latin) "From the great generosity of Cecil Rhodes".  The enlarged letters are a chronogram giving the date of construction, 1911, in roman numerals but involving a little "poetic" license as explained here.

The inscription below the statue of Cecil Rhodes