Oxford; Sunday, 27 February, 2022

I had a nice lie in and a late breakfast before checking out of the hotel and heading round to my first stop of the morning the Ashmolean Museum.

The Ashmolean is the main museum of the University of Oxford and is reputedly the first modern museum when it was founded in 1683 by the donation of Elias Ashmole’s collection of curiosities and artefacts. The original building was located close to the Bodleian Library, but moved to it’s current Victorian building in the middle of the 19th century. The lower floors chart human history form pre-historic to modern times in various locations with significant exhibits on Roman, Greek, Chinese and Indian history. On the upper floors are the galleries which display a large number of the universities paintings.

From the Ashmolean museum I walked the couple of hundred yards back to Broad Street and the building where it was originally founded. After the Ashmolean moved out the building had a number of uses before being turned in the early 20th century into the History of Science Museum. The museum has a large number of historic scientific instruments as well as more mundane items linked to the university such as the bed pans that penicillin was originally cultivated in and the blackboard that Einstein used when he gave a guest lecture at the university.

After taking in the History of Science museum I wandered down towards the River Charwell and visited the Botanical Gardens, taking the opportunity to wander around the small gardens and greenhouses.

From the Botanic Gardens it was about a 15 minute walk across the top of Christ Church Meadow to the College of the same name. I had a ticket booked for 3pm, and as it was still only 2.30 I took the opportunity to grab a quick lunch from a nearby supermarket and sit in the parkland for a while.

I then headed over to the College to pick up my entrance ticket and multi-media guide for my tour round both the College and the attached Cathedral.

The college was originally founded on the site of a much older priory by Thomas Wolsey as Cardinal College. After his falling out with Henry VIII the college was re-founded as Christ Church College and the Henry decreed that the chapel would become the Cathedral for the diocese of Oxford, making it one of the smallest Cathedrals in the country.

I spent quite a bit of time wandering around both the college and the cathedral, to the extent that the porters and custodians were already starting to shut things up as I got to the end of the tour.

From the College I headed back to the hotel, picked up my luggage and made my way over to the bus station to take the bus over to Milton Keynes for an overnight stop prior to work meetings the following day.