Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/277

 us. vm. OCT. i, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

271

statue was dethroned more than eighty year, ago only the bronze head being preserved so the Precentor tells me, in the College Library. Mr. John Fulleylove, R.I., in water-colour of this basin, reproduced Fulleylove and Thomas's ' Oxford,' 1903 introduced a pedestal surmounted by replica of Gian Bologna's famous flying Mercury at Florence ; but the result is no a happy one. This placid circle of water needs a central composition greater in bulk and more restful in design. Bologna's perfect little figure would appear lost ir such surroundings the denizen of a fairer clime condemned for ever to stand on tiptoe in a pond while vainly aspiring to reach the sky.

A learned discussion of the various parcels of land which make up Christ Church Meadow and its dependencies win be found in Mr Herbert Hurst's valuable essay entitled Historical Society in 1899), pp. 25, 28, 29 32-4, 41, 210. Elizabeth, Lady Montacute, whose beautiful table-tomb, with its inter- esting series of weepers, may be seen in the Cathedral (135f>), bestowed upon the Con vent of St. Frideswide Stockwell Mead the southern portion of what is now Christ Church Meadow.
 * Oxford Topography ' (printed for the Oxford

Had Wolsey lived, the north side of what was then called the Great Quadrant would have been nearly filled by a chapel surpassing in size King's College Chapel at Cambridge. Aubrey tells us that some- thing more than the foundations, as we should judge from Agas and Loggan, had been completed. A plinth reaching 7ft. above ground of which he has left us a slight sketch had been finished, but how far along the building it is impossible to say. The building was planned to extend almost the whole length of the north side of the main quadrangle, and to be 96 ft. wide, more or less. There is good reason to think that in 1662 Dean Fell appropriated the material which was above ground, and that he covered up the traces of the walls with garden mould for the Canons who dwelt there, carting off the chippings of his own work to improve a new straight walk in the meadow, as shown in the Loggan map, 1675. The chippings were white, so it was called White Walk until 1768 ; this being cor- rupted in the next century to Wide^Walk, and then to Broad Walk, its present name. It runs from west to east for a quarter of a mile, between a row of seventy-two elm trees on either side. Most of the ashlar- facing of the north wall of Wolsey's building

had been removed. The wall itself must have been more than 6 ft. thick, and a beautiful example of masonry. The dis- covery of these foundations was made in August, 1893. Under Dean Smalridge (1713- 1719) the " Dead Man's Walk," along the city wall outside Merton College, was raised, and the Broad Walk widened. The New Walk was formally opened in 1872. It runs to the River Isis and the College barges from near the western end of the Broad Walk, and at right angles to it.

I have often wondered why the interior view of Tom Quad, as compared with that of the Great Court of Trinity, Cambridge, is relatively disappointing. The Great Court of Trinity measures 334ft. by 288ft., Tom Quad 264 ft. by 261 ft. The former assumed its present aspect under the Master- ship of Dr. Thomas Nevile (1592-1615). The Great Gate, the last work of King's Hall, was completed in 1535 ; the chambers to the left of it, for about 50ft., twenty-one years later ; the Chapel in 1564 ; and the chambers betw r een it and the Gate twenty years afterwards. Nevile built the rest of the east side, pulling down the range dated 1490, which projected westward into the Court, and the south side (before 1597, when the statue of Queen Elizabeth, the reigning monarch, was placed on the Gate named after her, facing that of King Edward III., the founder of King's Hall). On the west side of the Court, at the south end, is the

Sicturesque triple-bay oriel which probably ghted the Hall of Michael House, used afterwards as the Hall of Trinity. On the same side, going northwards, is the existing Hall of Trinity College, built by Nevile in 1604-5, after the model of Middle Temple Hall, the dimensions of both being the same, viz., 100ft. long (including the screens) by 40 ft. wide and 50 ft. high ; and, lastly, the Master's Lodge, facing the Great Gate, as extended by Nevile in 1601. The porch and the semicircular bay oriel are part of his work. The Court was completed between L599 and 1601 by the construction of the 31d Library on the north side, next to the Master's Lodge, arid by the removal of ing Edward's Gate, which was evidently o much venerated that, although it was necessary to pull it down, sentiment de- nanded that it should be preserved, and accordingly it was rebuilt against the west nd of the Chapel. The Fountain. was put ip in 1602. The Great Court is strikingly irregular in plan. The Great Gate is not n the centre of the east side, nor is the Hall ither in the centre of the west side or