1865 – Meadow Building, Christ Church College, Oxford

In 1862-65 Meadow Buildings, a Venetian Gothic construction by T.N. Deane, was erected to accommodate more of the undergraduates onsite. Originally, college undergraduates would be given a suite of rooms with views overlooking both sides of the buildings. Recent building work has converted most of these rooms to ensuite. When it was first built, the relative distance of the Meadow Building from the more fashionable Peckwater and Canterbury Quads meant that it was considered the least desirable accommodation in college. Deane had previously built in Oxford, his 1861 building designed with Benjamin Woodward for the Oxford University Museum of Natural History is considered one of the highpoints of Ruskinian Gothic.

“Oue engraving represents one front of a large building which is in the course of construction in. Oxford, for the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church. It was designed by Mr. Thomas Newenham Deane, son of Sir Thomas Deane, of Dublin.

The building consists of tutors’, chaplain’s, and students’ rooms, entered from staircases, of which, the external indications are obvious. The students’ sets, of which there are forty-three, consist, as usual, of sitting-room, bed-room, and pantry j. those for the chaplains and tutors — ten in number — of four or more rooms, with usual conveniences. Besides these, there are apartments for the head porter, and a porter’s-room to each staircase.
The front shown is toward Christ Church Meadows, and has the Broadwalk and trees in front of it.

The length of the building is 331 feet; its depth, 37 feet. Each house, as it may.be called, — that is, the sets of rooms, right and left of the staircase, on each floor, — is entirely cut off from its neighbours by stone walls, running over the roofs in the manner prescribed by the Building Act. This is, of course, for the purpose of checking the spread of fire, should such a calamity arise in any of the blocks.

The building will stand on a site a little in advance of the present block of rooms in what is called Chaplain’s Quadrangle ; and the character of the architecture on this side required almost as much consideration as that on the Meadow front, there being so many and various old buildings with which it will be required in some measure to harmonize. It has been designed in a somewhat more conventional style, presenting a succession of gables instead of the continuous roofing of the Meadow front.

The materials of which the walls are composed are Bath stone ; the external walls being lined with brickwork, and having bands of three colours. The floors and roofs are of Memel timber, the supports of the former resting on corbels of stone, so as to free their ends. The staircases are also of timber, and arc of somewhat novel construction and design; the steps, surrounding-posts or uprights, running the whole height of the building. All the timber is exposed. The stories average 12 feet in height.

The contractor is Mr. Symms, of Oxford, who has taken the contract for about 22,000/. There was a limited competition.

The style of the building, when the structure grows in form and feature, will doubtless produce conflicting criticisms.
The Builder, November 29 1862