It was a short drive from there to Oxford, where we
visited the Christ Church College. It is one of 39 colleges within the
Oxford university. Contrary to what many believe, the 39 colleges don't
teach different subjects from each other. They all teach the same
curriculum with only a few exceptions. All 39 colleges are within
Oxford. During the final exams however, all the students go to the same
location to take their tests. The picture below shows the entry to the
Christ Church College as we approached.
At 5:00pm we had champagne in the dining hall of the
college. The dining hall is shown below.
This dining hall was the dining hall that was used for
the layout of the great dining hall in the first two Harry Potter films.
This dining hall was a little too small for the films' purposes, so a
replica dining hall was built as a set, only it was made considerably
larger to meet the films' needs. As can be seen by the picture above,
there are many paintings on the wall of the dining hall. All of these
paintings are portraits of significant people. One of the pictures had a
peculiar property to it. The man in the portrait looks at you no matter
where you were in the room. Below are two pictures of this portrait, one
taken at a 45 degree angle to the right of the portrait, and one taken
at a 45 degree angle to the left of the portrait.
One of the features of the Christ Church College that
Harry Potter fans will recognize is the main quadrangle of the college.
A portion of the quadrangle is shown below.
If this view isn't recognized, try this one...
Below is a view of the dining hall from the passageway
seen in the above picture.
c
While at Christ Church College, we visited a few of the gardens
around the college. One of the gardens received its fame as the location
of some of the story Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through The
Looking Glass. From 1855 to 1898, a mathematics tutor at the college
named Charles Dodgson, befriended the daughters of the Dean of
Christ Church, Henry Liddell. You would more likely recognize him by his
pen name, Lewis Carroll. One of the daughter's of the Dean was a girl
named Alice. Many of the characters and stories in Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass were inspired by and derived
from people and objects at Christ Church College. The keyhole in this
door located underneath the doorknob is the keyhole that Alice looked
through.
|