HERTFORD COLLEGE

Up Catte Street on the right is Hertford College. It is certain that there was a hall on this site as early as 1282. It was called Hart Hall and was founded by Elias de Hertford. Another hall – Black Hall­ which also served the needs of students - stood next to it. Both these establishments stood on the north side of the present quadrangle. In the middle of the sixteenth century, Hart Hall was rebuilt and some further additions were made at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries. In 1740, the hall became a college, but it proved unsuccessful and its premises were taken over by Magdalen Hall[1] about 1822. In 1874, Hertford College was re­founded. The buildings were extended towards New College Lane and another range was erected on the far side of that street. The outer wall of the senior common room, across the quadrangle from the gate­house, is fifteenth-century work; the old hall of Hart Hall, which is in the corner north of the senior common room, dates from the early sixteenth century.

The early sixteenth-century octagonal chapel of Our Lady, which stands on the north of New College Lane, was incorporated in the college in 1931. Before that, it had been used as a bookshop. The chapel was rebuilt about 1520 and, when the town walls were intact, it would have been just outside the Smythgate. There is an Annuncia­tion over the door. (From Goulder, Pilgrimage Pamphlets: Oxford & Cambridge, 1963)

The outside of the octagonal chapel (of 'St Mary at Smith Gate') can be seen from the street, including the (restored) relief of the Annunciation over the orginal door. Recognisable, though mutilated, Our Lady kneels on the left, and Gabriel, covered in feathers, appears on the right; Our Lady’s reading stand and book (wherein she would have been reading the prophecy of the virginal conception, in Isaiah), next to her, is intact; the flower pot, in the middle, remains, though the lily it must have contained has gone; between that and the angel is an almost entirely erased panel, which must have contained a scroll with the Angelic Salutation: Ave Maria, gratia plena.

For more on the history of Hertford College and its buildings, see their site.

[1] Not to be confused with the college of the same name.