The Bodleian's Buildings

I knew very early on in my preliminary research that I wanted to know more about the buildings of the Bodleian Library. Books and websites all showed beautiful photos. I had to wade through a lot of information about the collection to find out about these buildings, but the information was there. The buildings that house the Bodleian’s documents are almost as famous as the collection itself.

As you would have seen on my previous posts, YouTube also had some good videos.

The Bodleian Library was first housed in the old Duke Humphrey’s library. Bodley oversaw the restoration of the room himself with the help of, in his words, “carpenters, joiners, carvers, glasiers and all that idle rabble” (Gibson 1914). The restoration of the roof itself is amazing, as you can see in the picture below. The coats of arms are that of Oxford University.

(Rogers 1991)

The Arts End was built in 1610-1613, when the library was already running out of space. It ran over time and over budget, but is still one of the most beautiful rooms in Oxford. It is still the first thing that visitors see when entering the library from the front staircase. Then they just have to walk a few steps, before they can see Duke Humphrey’s library. The shelving in the Arts End, which reaches from floor to roof, was the first ever example of wall-shelving in an English library (Philip 1983). Before that, there was more of a stall arrangement, and students had to stand at lecterns to read books secured to the shelves by chains. This was before the collection grew so exponentially, and more space needed to be found. Below is a picture of this beautiful part of the library. The window and area at the far end of the photo are Selden End (more information to come).

 (Rogers 1991)

 

The building continued. On literally the day after Bodley’s funeral, work started on the Schools Quadrangle, with funds that he had left. It was first used for lecture and examination rooms but is now completely used by the library, mostly for storage. This was finished by 1624, and in 1634-7 an extension to Duke Humphrey’s library was built. This is still known as Selden End, which I pointed out in the picture above.

 (Wikipedia 2010)

 

The stunning building above is the Radcliffe Camera. It was opened in 1749 as a separate library, but was taken over by the Bodleian in 1860 and for the lucky patrons of Oxford it now houses reading rooms.

One interesting fact I found is that the Bodleian’s buildings were not heated until 1845, and no artificial lighting was used until 1929 (University of Oxford n.d.). It was considered too much of a fire hazard, but in a climate such as England’s these must have been very difficult conditions. Cigarette smoking, however, was allowed for a time (Wikipedia 2010).

Storage of the collection seems to always have been a major issue at the Bodleian. An underground storage space was built under the Radcliffe in 1909-12, and in the 1930s building started on the New Bodleian, which is connected to the rest of the library by an underground tunnel. This is undergoing major refurbishments over the five years, and I’ll write more about this in the next post.

 (Gibson 1914)

REFERENCES

‘Bodleian Library’ 2010, Wikipedia, viewed September 4 2010, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodleian_Library>

‘Bodleian Library, Oxford’ n.d. Sacred Destinations, viewed September 4 2010, < http://www.sacred-destinations.com/england/oxford-bodleian-library> 

History of the Bodleian n.d., University of Oxford, viewed September 4 2010, <http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/docs/historybodleian.pdf>

Besomi D 2000, ‘Roy Harrod and the Commission of Inquiry into the Bodleian Question, 1930-31’, Bodleian Library Record, vol. 17, pp. 36-43.

Gibson S 1914, Some Oxford Libraries, Oxford University Press, London.

Philip, I 1983, The Bodleian Library in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Rogers D 1991, The Bodleian Library and its Treasures 1320-1700, Aidan Ellis, Oxford.