| Merton College | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| University of Oxford | ||||||||||||
 South facade as seen from Merton Field | ||||||||||||
 Arms: Or, three chevronels party per pale, the first and third azure and gules, the second gules and azure | ||||||||||||
| Coordinates | 51°45′04″N1°15′07″W / 51.751°N 1.252°W /51.751; -1.252 | |||||||||||
| Full name | The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford | |||||||||||
| Latin name | Domus sive collegium scholarium de Merton in universitate Oxon.[1] | |||||||||||
| Motto | "Qui Timet Deum Faciet Bona" ("He who fears God shall do good") | |||||||||||
| Established | 1264; 761 years ago (1264) | |||||||||||
| Named for | Walter de Merton | |||||||||||
| Sister college | Peterhouse, Cambridge | |||||||||||
| Warden | Jennifer Payne[2] | |||||||||||
| Undergraduates | 291[3] | |||||||||||
| Postgraduates | 244[3] | |||||||||||
| Endowment | £274.4 million(2020)[4] | |||||||||||
| Website | merton.ox.ac.uk | |||||||||||
| Boat club | Boat Club | |||||||||||
| Map | ||||||||||||
  Location in Oxford city centre | ||||||||||||
Merton College (in full:The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is one of theconstituent colleges of theUniversity of Oxford in England.[5] Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s whenWalter de Merton, chancellor toHenry III and later toEdward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to support it. An important feature of de Merton's foundation was that this "college" was to be self-governing and the endowments were directly vested in the Warden and Fellows.[6]
By 1274, when Walter retired from royal service and made his final revisions to the college statutes, the community was consolidated at its present site in the south east corner of the city ofOxford, and a rapid programme of building commenced. The hall and thechapel and the rest of the front quad were complete before the end of the 13th century.Mob Quad, one of Merton'squadrangles, was constructed between 1288 and 1378, and is claimed to be the oldest quadrangle in Oxford,[7] whileMerton College Library, located in Mob Quad and dating from 1373, is the oldest continuously functioning library for university academics and students in the world.[8]
Like many of Oxford's colleges, Merton admitted its first mixed-sex cohort in 1979, after over seven centuries as an institution for men only.[9] Merton's second female warden,Irene Tracey, was appointed asVice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 2022,[10] and ProfessorJennifer Payne was subsequently elected as acting warden in 2022[11] and as warden in 2023.[2]
Alumni and academics past and present include fiveNobel laureates, the writerJ. R. R. Tolkien, who wasMerton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 to 1959, andLiz Truss, who served asPrime Minister of the United Kingdom in September and October 2022.[12] Merton is one of the wealthiest colleges in Oxford and held funds totalling £298 million as of July 2020.[13]
Merton College was founded in 1264 byWalter de Merton,Lord Chancellor andBishop of Rochester.[14] It has a claim to be the oldest college in Oxford, a claim which is disputed between Merton College,Balliol College andUniversity College. One argument for Merton's claim is that it was the first college to be provided withstatutes, a constitution governing the college set out at its founding. Merton's statutes date back to 1264, whereas neither Balliol nor University College had statutes until the 1280s.[15]
Merton has an unbroken line ofwardens dating back to 1264. Of these, many had great influence over the development of the college.Henry Savile was one notable leader who led the college to flourish in the early 17th century by extending its buildings and recruiting new fellows.[16]
In 1333, masters from Merton were among those who left Oxford in an attempt to founda new university at Stamford. The leader of the rebels was reported to be one William deBarnby, a Yorkshireman who had been fellow and bursar of Merton College.[17]
St Alban Hall was an independentacademic hall owned by the convent ofLittlemore until it was purchased by Merton College in 1548 following thedissolution of the convent. It continued as a separate institution until it was finally annexed by the college in 1881, on the resignation of its last principal,William Charles Salter.[18]
During theEnglish Civil War, Merton was the only Oxford college to side withParliament. This was due to an earlier dispute between the Warden,Nathaniel Brent, and theVisitor of Merton andArchbishop of Canterbury,William Laud. Brent had beenVicar-General to Laud, who had held a visitation of Merton College in 1638, and insisted on many radical reforms: his letters to Brent were couched in haughty and decisive language.[19]
Brent, a parliamentarian, moved to London at the start of the Civil War: the college's buildings were commandeered by theRoyalists and used to house much ofCharles I's court when Oxford was the Royalists' capital. This included the King's French wife,Queen Henrietta Maria, who was housed in or near what is now the Queen's Room, the room above the arch between Front and Fellows' Quads. A portrait of Charles I hangs near the Queen's Room as a reminder of the role it played in his court.[citation needed]
Brent gave evidence against Laud in his trial in 1644. After Laud was executed on 10 January 1645,John Greaves, one of the subwardens of Merton andSavilian Professor of Astronomy, drew up a petition for Brent's removal from office; Brent was deposed by Charles I on 27 January 1646 and replaced byWilliam Harvey.[19]
Thomas Fairfax captured Oxford for the Parliamentarians after itsthird siege in 1646 and Brent returned from London. However, in 1647, a parliamentary commission (visitation) was set up by Parliament "for the correction of offences, abuses, and disorders" in the University of Oxford. Nathaniel Brent was the president of the visitors.[19] Greaves was accused of sequestrating the college's plate and funds forKing Charles I.[20] Despite a deposition from his brotherThomas, Greaves had lost both his Merton fellowship and his Savilian chair by 9 November 1648.[21]
The "House of Scholars of Merton" originally had properties inSurrey (in present-dayOld Malden) as well as in Oxford, but it was not until the mid-1260s that Walter de Merton acquired the core of the present site in Oxford, along the south side of what was then St John's Street (nowMerton Street). The college was consolidated on this site by 1274, when Walter made his final revisions to the college statutes.[22]
The initial acquisition included the parish church of St John (which was superseded by the chapel) and three houses to the east of the church which now form the north range of Front Quad. Walter also obtained permission from the king to extend from these properties south to the old city wall to form an approximately square site. The college continued to acquire other properties as they became available on both sides of Merton Street. At one time, the college owned all the land from the site that is nowChrist Church to the south-eastern corner of the city. The land to the east eventually became the current Fellows' garden, while the western end was leased by WardenRichard Rawlins in 1515 for the foundation ofCorpus Christi (at an annual rent of just over £4).[23]
By the late 1280s, the old church of St John the Baptist had fallen into "a ruinous condition",[24] and the college accounts show that work on a new church began in about 1290. The presentchoir, with its enormous east window, was complete by 1294. The window is an important example (because it is so well dated) of how the strict geometrical conventions of theEarly English Period of architecture were beginning to be relaxed at the end of the 13th century.[25] The southtransept was built in the 14th century, the north transept in the early years of the 15th. The great tower was complete by 1450. The chapel replaced the parish church of St. John and continued to serve as the parish church as well as the chapel until 1891. It is for this reason that it is generally referred to as Merton Church in older documents, and that there is a north door into the street as well as doors into the college. This dual role also probably explains the enormous scale of the chapel, which in its original design was to have anave and twoaisles extending to the west.[26]
A new choral foundation was established in 2007, providing for a choir of sixteen undergraduate and graduate choral scholars singing from October 2008. The choir was formerly directed byPeter Phillips, director of theTallis Scholars, and is now directed by Benjamin Nicholas, a former director of music atTewkesbury Abbey.[27] In 2013, the installation of a new organ, designed and built byDobson Pipe Organ Builders, was completed.[28] The chapel is known for its acoustics.[29]
A spire from the chapel has resided in Pavilion Garden VI of theUniversity of Virginia since 1928, when "it was given to the University to honorJefferson's educational ideals."[30]
The hall is the oldest surviving college building, originally completed before 1277, but apart from the fine medieval ironwork on the door, almost no trace of the ancient structure has survived the successive reconstruction efforts; first byJames Wyatt in the 1790s and then again byGilbert Scott in 1874, whose work included the “handsome oak roof”.[31] The hall is still used daily for meals in term time. It is not usually open to visitors.[32]
Front quad itself is probably the earliest collegiatequadrangle, but its informal, almost haphazard, pattern cannot be said to have influenced designers elsewhere. A reminder of its original domestic nature can be seen in the north east corner where one of the flagstones is marked "Well". The quad is formed of what would have been the back gardens of the three original houses that Walter acquired in the 1260s.[33]
Visitors to Merton are often told that Mob Quad is the oldest quadrangle of any Oxford or Cambridge college and set the pattern for future collegiate architecture. It was built in three phases: 1288–1291, 1304–1311, and finally completed with the Library in 1373–1378.[34] But Merton's own Front Quad was probably enclosed earlier, albeit with a less unified design.[35] Other colleges can point to similarly old and unaltered quadrangles, for example Old Court atCorpus Christi College, Cambridge, builtc.1353–1377.[36]
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The grandest quadrangle in Merton is the Fellows' Quadrangle, immediately south of the hall. The quad was the culmination of the work undertaken byHenry Savile at the beginning of the 17th century. The foundation stone was laid shortly after breakfast on 13 September 1608 (as recorded in the college Register), and work was complete by September 1610 (although the battlements were added later).[37] The southern gateway is surmounted by a tower of the fourOrders, probably inspired by Italian examples that Warden Savile would have seen on his European travels. The main contractors were fromYorkshire (as was Savile); John Ackroyd and John Bentley of Halifax supervised the stonework, and Thomas Holt the timber. This group were also later employed to work on theBodleian Library andWadham College.[38]
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Most of the other buildings areVictorian or later and include: St. Alban's Quad (or "Stubbins"), designed byBasil Champneys,[39] built on the site of the medievalSt Alban Hall (elements of the older façade are incorporated into the part that faces onto Merton Street); the Grove building, built in 1864 byWilliam Butterfield but "chastened" in the 1930s byT.H. Hughes;[40][41] the buildings beyond the Fellows' Garden called "Rose Lane"; several buildings north of Merton Street, includinga real tennis court, and the Old Warden's Lodgings (designed by Champneys in 1903);[39] and a new quadrangle inHolywell Street, some distance away from the college.
TS Eliot Lecture Theatre is a new lecture theatre named afterT. S. Eliot, a former member of the college, opened in 2010. It has a bust of the writer byJacob Epstein, presented byFrank Brenchley, a former member and Fellow of the college. Brenchley presented his collection of Eliot first editions and ephemera to the college, which is believed to be the second largest collection of such material worldwide. The foyer is illuminated by a lighting display representing three constellations that were visible on the night of 14 September 1264, the day the college was founded.[42]
The garden fills the southeastern corner of the old walled city of Oxford. The walls may be seen fromChrist Church Meadows andMerton Field (now used byMagdalen College School, Oxford as a playing field for cricket, rugby, and football). The gardens are notable for amulberry tree planted in the early 17th century, an armillarysundial, an extensive lawn, aHerma statue, and the old Fellows' Summer House (now used as a music room and rehearsal space).[citation needed]
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Merton admits both undergraduate and graduate students. It admitted its first female students in 1980 and was the second former male college to elect a female head of house (in 1994). Merton has traditionally had single-sex accommodation for first-year undergraduates, with female students going into the Rose Lane buildings and most male students going into three houses onMerton Street. This policy was abandoned in 2007, with all accommodation now mixed by sex and course.[citation needed]
Undergraduate admission to the college, like other Oxford colleges, is based solely on academic potential.[43] In 2010, it was (incorrectly) reported that Merton had not admitted a black student in the previous five years. A university spokeswoman commented that black students were more likely to apply for particularly oversubscribed subjects.[44] The university also reported that Merton had admitted at least one black undergraduate since 2005.[45]
Since the introduction of an officialNorrington Table published by the university in 2004, Merton occupied one of the top three positions every year (often coming in 1st), until 2012 when it dropped to 14th.[46] In 2014, it regained the first position, preserving its status as one of the most academically successful colleges of the last twenty years.[47] In 2021, Merton was ranked Oxford's top college in the Norrington Table, with a score of 82.9.[48]
At the 'Time Ceremony', students dressed in formalacademic dress walk backwards around the Fellows' Quad drinkingport. Traditionally participants also held candles, but this practice has been abandoned in recent years. Many students have now adopted the habit of linking arms and twirling around at each corner of the quad. The alleged purpose of this tradition is to maintain the integrity of the space–time continuum during the transition fromBritish Summer Time toGreenwich Mean Time, which occurs in the early hours of the last Sunday in October. However, the ceremony (invented by two undergraduates in 1971) mostly serves as a spoof of other Oxford ceremonies, and historically as a celebration of the end of the experimental period of British Standard Time from 1968 to 1971 when the UK stayed one hour ahead of GMT all year round. There are threetoasts associated with the ceremony. The first is "to a good old time!"; the second, a joint toast to the sundial and the nearby mulberry tree (morus nigra), "o tempora, o more"; and the third, "long live the counter-revolution!".[49]
Merton is the only college in Oxford to hold a triennialwinter ball, instead of the more commonCommemoration ball. The most recent of these was held on 26 November 2022.[50]
Merton has a number of drinking and dining societies, along the lines of other colleges. These include the all-maleMyrmidons, the female-equivalent Myrmaids and L'Ancien Régime. The Myrmidon club is open to all members of the college in the present day, male or female, and hosts termly black tie events.[citation needed]
Merton is host to a number of subject-specific societies, the most notable being the Halsbury Society (Law)[51] and the Chalcenterics (Classics).[52] Other academic societies include the Neave Society, which aims to discuss and debate political issues, and theBodley Club, founded in 1894 as a forum for undergraduate papers on literature but now a speaker society.[53]
The Bodley Club is a speaker society at Merton College, Oxford. Founded in 1894 as a forum in which undergraduates delivered academic papers on literature, the club has changed form over the years, and was reformed in the 1980s as a speaker society. All members of the college, and usually members of the university as a whole, are invited to their events.[citation needed]
The club began on 19 May 1894 (though it was not christened 'The Bodley Club' until June). The initial constitution contained a rule (Rule 7) which stated that 'a written paper is preferred, but any member may speak on any literary subject instead or may propose that any literary work be read at the meeting.' It was not long before this provision was required, as the minute-book reveals in its entry for 19 October 1894: 'Owing to unpardonable slackness on the part of members, the four months of vacation proved insufficient to collect coherent ideas on any particular subject...However an agreeable and instructive evening was passed in reading Tennyson's 'Maud'.' From early years the club has maintained a troubled existence, and the Secretary noted on 1 November 1900 a motion of censure 'against a person or persons unknown who were responsible for the undoubted blackness which is creeping over the Bodley Club.' Nevertheless, the club has continued in one form or another to the present day.[citation needed]
Among the notable papers delivered to the Bodley Club are those byFrederic Harrison,[54]Harold Henry Joachim,[55]Henry Hamilton Fyfe[56] (brother of the secretary, William),Northrop Frye,[57]Alister Clavering Hardy,[58] andRonald Knox. Several of the club's first members went on to become significant figures, includingHerbert George Flaxman Spurrell andWilliam Hamilton Fyfe.[citation needed]
Merton has a long-standing sporting relationship withMansfield College, with the colleges fielding amalgamated sports teams for many major sports.[citation needed] In rowing,Merton College Boat Club has been Head of the River inSummer Eights once; its men's 1st VIII held the headship in 1951. Merton's women have done better in recent years, gaining the headship inTorpids in 2003 and rowing over to defend the title in 2004.[citation needed]
The collegepreprandial grace is amongst the longest in Oxford, and is always recited before formal dinners in Hall, usually by the seniorpostmaster present. The first two lines of the Latin text are based on verses 15 and 16 ofPsalm 145.
Oculi omnium in te respiciunt, Domine. Tu das escam illis tempore opportuno.
Aperis manum tuam, et imples omne animal benedictione tua.
Benedicas nobis, Deus, omnibus donis quae de tua beneficentia accepturi simus.
Per Jesum Christum dominum nostrum, Amen.
Roughly translated it means:
The eyes of the world look up to thee, O Lord. Thou givest them food in due season.
Thou openest thy hand and fillest every creature with thy blessing.
Bless us, O God, with all the gifts which by thy good works we are about to receive.
Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, Amen.
For the relevant verses of the Psalm, theAuthorized Version has:
In contrast, Merton's post-prandial grace is brief:Benedictus benedicat ("Let him who has been blessed, give blessing"). The latter grace is spoken by the senior Fellow present at the end of dinner on High Table.[citation needed]
At theUniversity of Cambridge, a slightly different version of the Latin text of these verses is painted around Old Hall inQueens' College, Cambridge, and is "commonly in use at other Cambridge colleges".[59]
Merton alumni (Mertonians) and fellows have pursued careers in a variety of disciplines.
Among the earliest people that have been claimed as Merton fellows areWilliam of Ockham andDuns Scotus, outstanding academic figures from the early 14th century (however, these claims are disputed).[60] Other early fellows include theOxford Calculators, a group of 14th-century thinkers associated with Merton who took a logico-mathematical approach to philosophical problems. Theologian and philosopherJohn Wycliffe was another early fellow of the college.
Founder of theBodleian Library,Thomas Bodley, was admitted as fellow in 1564.[61] Another significant figure,Henry Savile, was appointed Warden some years later in 1585 (held the position until 1621) and had great influence of the development of the college.William Harvey, who was the first to describe in detail thesystemic circulation, was warden from 1645 to 1646.Lord Randolph Churchill,Chancellor of the Exchequer andLeader of the House of Commons (and father ofWinston Churchill), matriculated in October 1867, whileMax Beerbohm, an English essayist,parodist, andcaricaturist studied at Merton in the 1890s and was Secretary of theMyrmidon Club.
Merton has also produced notable alumni and fellows in more recent times. In science, Merton is associated with fourNobel Prize winners: chemistFrederick Soddy (1921), zoologistNikolaas Tinbergen (1973), physicistAnthony Leggett (2003) and physicistAnton Zeilinger (2022).[62][63] Other Mertonians in science include CanadianneurosurgeonWilder Penfield, mathematicianAndrew Wiles[61] whoproved Fermat's Last Theorem, computer scientistTony Hoare, chemistGeorge Radda, economistCatherine Tucker, geneticistAlec Jeffreys and cryptographerArtur Ekert.
![Wilder Penfield, neurosurgeon, once dubbed "the greatest living Canadian".[64]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWilder_Penfield.jpg)
Notable Mertonians within the field of literature include poetT. S. Eliot, who won theNobel Prize in Literature in 1948, and authorJ. R. R. Tolkien who wasMerton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton from 1945 to 1959.[12][65] Jamaican-British Professor of SociologyStuart Hall was a pioneer in the academic field ofcultural studies and director of theCentre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.
Former students with careers as politicians include British politiciansReginald Maudling,Airey Neave,Jesse Norman,Ed Vaizey,Denis MacShane,Liz Truss andPeter Tapsell, while international alumni includeBob Krueger, formerU.S. Senator fromTexas, andArthur Mutambara, formerDeputy Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.
In business, formerDirector-General of the BBC and later CEO of the New York Times CompanyMark Thompson,[66] CEO of StonewallBen Summerskill and former CEO of SonyHoward Stringer are alumni. In law,Henry Litton served as one of the first Permanent Judges of theCourt of Final Appeal of Hong Kong (Hong Kong'scourt of last resort), whileBrian Leveson wasPresident of the Queen's Bench Division from 2013 to 2019 and Head of Criminal Justice.
Other alumni include the composerLennox Berkeley, actor and singer-songwriterKris Kristofferson, mountaineerAndrew Irvine,RAF pilotLeonard Cheshire, athlete and neurologistRoger Bannister (later Master of Pembroke College, Oxford), journalistTanya Gold andNaruhito, Emperor of Japan.
Oxford-born clinical neuroscientistIrene Tracey was elected as Warden in succession toMartin J. Taylor (former professor of pure mathematics at theUniversity of Manchester) on his retirement in 2018, and served until the start of her tenure as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 2023.[67]
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Just like the other ancient colleges of Oxford, Merton was originally an all-male college. It admitted its first female students in 1980 and became the second former all-male college to elect a female head of house whenJessica Rawson was appointed asWarden in 1994.[68] ProfessorIrene Tracey was appointed as Merton's second female warden in 2019, and later became Oxford's second female vice-chancellor.[10][67] She was succeeded by another woman as warden,Jennifer Payne.
Alumnae of Merton include the shortest-servingprime minister of the United Kingdom in historyLiz Truss andPrincess Akiko of Mikasa.
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Wilder Penfield was born in Spokane, Washington, and spent much of his youth in Hudson, Wisconsin. ... During his life he was called "the greatest living Canadian."
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