Spring Newsletter 2016

Association of Oxford University Pensioners

President: Professor Carlos Ruiz ([email protected])
Chairman: Professor Gilliane Sills ([email protected])
The Committee:
Secretary: Jan Allen ([email protected])
Treasurer: Geoffrey Clough ([email protected])
Newsletter Editors: Laurence Reynolds, John and Gaynor Woodhouse,
Eileen Iredale ([email protected])
Events Administrator: Caroline Carpenter ([email protected])
Website Manager: Rosemary Williams ([email protected])
Members: Wendy Claye, Susan Greenford, David Mills (co-opted), Andrew Moss.

Membership of the Association

Staff who have worked in the University or a college until reaching retirement are
eligible for AOUP membership in one of two ways. Membership is granted
automatically for life to University staff who at the time of their retirement are
employed by the University, and also to their spouses or partners. Staff who at the
time of their retirement are employed by a College, and their spouses, partners,
widows, widowers, may opt for AOUP membership by joining as a Social member,
paying an annual subscription which is currently £5. Social membership is also
open to University AOUP members who choose to pay the annual subscription.
All AOUP members receive the Newsletter twice a year, and are able to attend the
winter talks. Social members are entitled to apply to join in all excursions and
other activities organised throughout the year.
Application forms are available from The Secretary, AOUP, c/o Beaver House,
23-28 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford, OX1 2ET

Subscriptions for Social Membership are due on 31 January. However, if no
renewal is received by 28 February, you will be deemed to have withdrawn from
Social Membership.

Subscriptions: The Treasurer, 46 Laurel Drive, Southmoor, OX13 5DJ

Trips and Visits: The Events Administrator (address on application forms)

Newsletter: The Newsletter Editor, 35 William Street, Marston, Oxford OX3 0ES

Pensioner Visitor: Mrs Marie Hough. She normally works on three days between
Monday and Thursday based at Beaver House, 23-28 Hythe Bridge Street, with
Pensions and Finance and may be reached on 01865 616203 where messages
can be left or email: [email protected].

Table of contents 2
2
Editorial 3
Chairman’s Report 5
Pensioners’ Welfare Officer’s Report 5
Spring/Summer Programme 2016 11
Melons Galore: food discoveries by English travellers in Italy 1550-1650
Corsi’s polished stones 15
15
Reports of Autumn/Winter Visits 2015-16 17
 British and Best: Inside the British Library and the Magna Carta Exhibition 19
 Hampstead and Kenwood House 20
 Oxford University Press Museum
 The Trials of Galileo at the Burton-Taylor Studio Theatre 22
22
Reports of Autumn/Winter Talks 2015 23
 Behind the Scenes: aspects of the film and TV industry 25
 The Scientific Exploration of Mars
 Also-Rans: the Injustice of History 26
26
A Miscellany 28
 The Magna Carta Pageant 2015 29
 Amblers Anonymous – a Walk on the Historic Side 30
 Six things a Bear can do with a Ragged Staff
 The 2015 AOUP Carol Service and Christmas Lunch 31
33
Pensioners’ Crossword No 23 34
Solution to Pensioners’ Crossword No 22
Obituaries

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Editorial

Our two feature articles give the Spring issue an Italian flavour. Diego Zancani,
Emeritus Professor of Italian, has an interest in the food history of his native country
and writes appetizingly about the culinary experiences of 16th- and 17th-century
English travellers in Italy. Monica Price, Head of Earth Collections at the University
Museum of Natural History, brings to our attention what is perhaps one of the
Museum’s less familiar treasures – the Corsi Collection of Decorative Stones, many
of which do, indeed, look good enough to eat. Although not on public display, the
collection is readily accessible on the comprehensive and colourful website, which
we do encourage you to explore.

There is, of course, much besides the feature articles in this issue, and, as
always, the Editors are most grateful to AOUP members who agree to write reports
for the Newsletter on the talks and visits. Please do let us know if you see
something in the forthcoming programme that you would be willing to write up for
the next issue – otherwise we have to resort to ambush!

The Editors

Chairman’s Report

What a strange winter we’ve had so far! Lots of wind and rain and not enough of
the cold clear days that can make English winter days special. The consequences
can be surprising too – the Guardian reported David Buckingham, the senior
conservation scientist with the RSPB explaining potential problems for birds. ‘It may
sound paradoxical, but mild weather can often produce
dramatic reductions in insect populations. Very cold
weather kills off viruses and bacteria in the soil
whereas in mild weather they thrive. They then infect
and kill off large numbers of insects, including native
species of butterflies and moths. Their numbers drop,
and that has consequences later in the year when
native birds, such as wrens and goldcrests, do not
have enough food to feed their chicks – which then starve. Prolonged mild weather
can have unexpected and pervasive effects.’ On the other hand, I guess that if the
weather’s too cold, that will be directly bad for insects. And there is an advantage,
too, in the warmth we’ve had – spring seems already here in my garden, with
primroses, crocuses, snowdrops, even daffodils, in bud or in flower – and, perhaps
my favourite, the Algerian Iris, Iris Unguicularis.

It has been another good six months for AOUP, with a wide range of activities.
One of the most exciting for me was the performance of The Trials of Galileo in the
Burton Taylor Theatre. Richard and I saw it last year and I was so impressed that I
arranged with the producer that AOUP should have three dedicated performances.
The producer then added a further two public performances, both of which sold out
well in advance, and I very much enjoyed the realisation that AOUP was making an
impact beyond our membership. It was also interesting as a use of our email list to
alert members to the fact that there were still tickets available after the deadline.

We have two summer trips in to London, and I’m really sorry that we have to
leave Oxford very early for these – 8.15am from Pusey House and 8.30am from

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Peartree Services. Traffic in to London is very difficult to predict and, advised by
Barbara Plastow, we’re now allowing two hours for the journey from Peartree. We
may well arrive early, but this is less stressful than arriving late.

I suggested in the last Newsletter that we would dispense with the Membership
cards this year, and no-one has objected to this proposal. From now on, Social
members will receive just application forms for outings.

This year has been a very stable one in terms of committee membership. Jan
Allen has taken on the two Secretary roles we have – Membership and Committee
– so she maintains the database of members, and organises all our committee
meetings. She also generously agreed to organise the Christmas Carol Service, so
she’s taken over everything that Caroline Harding did – and we’re grateful to
Caroline for providing support by answering the many questions that arose. Jan
and Geoff Clough, the Treasurer, liaise to make sure that those on the Social
Membership list are all paid up; so if you don’t receive application forms for outings
with this Newsletter when you were expecting to do so it may be that you’re one of
those for whom we don’t have a current record of payment. If this happens, please
let us know in case we’ve made a mistake – but if your Social Membership has
lapsed and you’d like to renew it, please consider doing so by completing a
Standing Order mandate – it saves so much work for us.

Caroline Carpenter has coped brilliantly with the steadily increasing number of
applications for outings – helped by her husband David; many thanks to both of
them. And thanks too to everyone else on the Committee – and to those members
who’ve made suggestions for speakers and outings – please do keep the ideas
coming in.

I look forward to seeing and hearing from many of you during the coming year.

Gilliane Sills

Pensioners’ Welfare Officer’s Report

In November I attended The Care and Dementia Show at The National Exhibition
Centre. The exhibitors were varied – from providing care at home services,
equipment to maintain independence, computing systems to manage staff in
nursing homes, and cleaning and hotel services for nursing homes. I was
particularly pleased to see good quality food and the use of fresh ingredients high
on the agenda for nursing homes. Having recently read a piece of research on the
beneficial effects of spices and red peppers, I was keen to see the use of these in
nursing home foods. Spices, the research had concluded, have beneficial roles in
treating cardiovascular, dermatological and gastrointestinal conditions, and various
cancers and neurogenic bladder. For the best possible effect we should use fresh
chilli peppers as they are richer in the bioactive ingredient. The research also
claims eating red peppers decreases the appetite and may be able to help counter
obesity. However, it is disturbing that at times I still hear from some of you about
the poor quality of food being served to relatives who are in nursing homes: a
problem that urgently needs to be looked at.

One of the exhibitors at The Care and Dementia Show was Spring Chicken,
based at Prama House, 267 Banbury Road, Oxford. Its claim is to provide products
for making life easier and brighter. They certainly had an unusual way of attracting

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people onto their stand as they had an artist drawing caricatures of the
unsuspecting. Mine I will only show to those who promise not to laugh! Their
website is www.springchicken.co.uk or Freephone 08009803961.

One of the seminars I attended was ‘The Funding of Adult Social Care’ exploring
the current system and the potential capping of care costs. The speakers were
Nadra Ahmed OBE, Chairman of the National Care Association and Alan Lotinga,
Director for Health and Wellbeing, Birmingham City Council.

Funding of care can be very confusing for people; and now there is a delay in the
implementation of the Care Act phase two which was to introduce caps on the
individual’s liability to pay for their own care. Oxfordshire County Council have a
duty to complete a free care needs assessment when someone has care needs;
and they also have a duty to complete a financial assessment free of charge. Under
the new Care Act the Council have a duty to help even those who are self-funding
to arrange packages of care when staying at home. They do, however, have two
charging bands depending on whether they are just arranging, or arranging and
managing, the care package on your behalf. You can of course still arrange your
own care package when you are self-funding. The financial assessment the Council
undertakes can be difficult to follow as regards how the Council calculates whether
individuals need to make a contribution towards their care costs; but it is a set
procedure. Hopefully this is done with some sensitivity, as the fact that these
assessments are needed implies that people are already in a vulnerable position. It
is too complex for me to try to explain here, but I can recommend you to Age UK
Fact Sheet 10 Paying for Permanent Residential Care and Age UK Fact Sheet 41
Social Care Assessment, eligibility and Care Planning. It may be that you need to
take some specific financial advice. There is the Society of Later Life Advisors, who
specialise in advising on the requirements we may need to use our finances for as
we age. They can be contacted on Tel 0333 2020 454 or
[email protected]

Oxford County Council also recommend My Care My Home Tel 0800 731 8470
http://www.mycaremyhome.co.uk to give advice on care needs.

Anyone whose spouse or partner has had to go into care is often not prepared for
the impact and the large void it can leave for the person left at home. I would urge
anyone in this situation not to be afraid to ask for support to get over this most
difficult of transitions in their life. I would suggest Carers Oxfordshire at
[email protected] Tel 08450507666 or Carers UK Tel 0808
808 7777 email [email protected]

I am always happy to visit anyone trying to come to terms with a loved one going
into care; so please do not hesitate to contact me by telephone or email. I do
routinely come out to visit those of you who are over 75 years of age and especially
those of you over 90, but I am happy to call on anyone, whatever your age, if you
would like a visit; and I still go to the University Club most third Tuesdays of the
month from 2pm.

Marie Hough, Pensioner Welfare Officer, Finance Division, University of Oxford,
23/38 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2ET, Tel 01865 616203
Email: [email protected]

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Spring/Summer Programme 2016

Talks

The remaining talk will take place, as usual, in the Department of Engineering
Science, starting at 2.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2. Tea, coffee and cakes will be
served after the talk in the Holder Common Room nearby.

16 March Children and War: experiences of the Second World War in
Oxfordshire – Liz Woolley

Visits

1,3,9,11,15,17, Literary Oxford walks (Alistair Lack)

21 March Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the BBC
24 April (Sunday)

& 4 May

9-13 May Five-day excursion to South-East Ireland
18 & 24 May Woburn Abbey

8 & 16 June Secret London (City & Village Tours)

6 & 14 July Coughton Court and Ragley

28 & 29 July President’s Garden Parties

15 & 21 September St Albans – visit to cathedral and walking tour of city

14 December Carol Service and Christmas Lunch

Melons Galore: food discoveries by English
travellers in Italy 1550-1650

Travellers have always been keen to visit Italy, seen both as a cradle of civilisation
where much of Western art, architecture, and science began, and as the centre of
Christianity, or at least of Catholicism, even when, for Protestant visitors, there may
have been dangers. To visit a foreign land is to confront yourself and your
background. Intelligent travel implies a reflection on the ‘self’, a comparison with
modes of living taken for granted, and an analysis of individual and social
behaviour. This may apply also to that essential activity of human beings: food, not
just as nourishment, but also as symbolism, ritual, and even religious - or at least
superstitious - attitudes. Moreover, these first-hand experiences must usually be
written to be communicated to others, and this involves a further level of reflection
and organisation, if not of rhetorical skill. All the travellers mentioned here have
something to convey about the process of discovery, of different customs, different
languages, and different foods, all in one geographical area called Italy, which did
not exist at the time as a unified political entity. Although these travellers had to
pass through numerous borders, obtain various passports, and frequently bribe
frontier guards, they are all aware of being ‘in Italy’.

The oldest known diary of English travel in Italy is by Sir Richard Torkington, a
priest who went to Jerusalem via Northern Italy around 1517. He apparently had a

5

sweet tooth, and was very impressed by Venetian marzipan, and biscuits with
sweet wine.

Another traveller to the European continent who reached the Italian peninsula and
left a record of his journey was the former Carthusian monk and physician, Andrew
Borde, who published his Introduction to Knowledge in 1542. Apart from some
platitudes in the short section on Rome, such as ‘Italy is a noble champion countre
plesaunt and plentyfull of breade, wyne and corne’, Borde adds some curious
remarks when talking of central and Northern Italy (i.e. Lombardy). He states that
the Lombards ‘wyll ete frogges, guttes and all. Adders, snayles and musheroms be
good meate there.’ This may seem an early example of sensationalism, but is
reminiscent of an important dietary treatise of the mid-15th century by Michele
Savonarola, the chief medical doctor at the court of Ferrara. He mentions frogs,
together with snails, but specifies that they need to be eviscerated, cleaned and
that the head and feet should be cut off, then fried in pork fat, and a little verjuice
(agresto) should be added, with some pepper and cloves.

For many English travellers, discovering Italian food is like discovering a different
and new language. One of the earliest travellers is a very well-known aristocratic
figure, diplomat and writer, who left a manuscript diary, not intended for publication.
Sir Thomas Hoby (1530-1566) studied at St John’s College, Cambridge. In August
1548, he left for Italy to study at Padua, although he did not register in the Faculty
of Arts and Law, and left the Venetian town on 7 June 1549. His Travels and life
(1551-1564) concern two separate visits to Italy. In general, he seems to be more
interested in wines than in food, and he lists many in the various states of Italy,
such as Torbiano in Tuscany (Trebbiano?), malvoseye (Malvasia?) in Rome.
Although Sir Thomas mentions that in Siena he was invited to dinner by Don Diego
de Mendoza, together with other Englishmen, he only says that they ‘were greatlie
feasted and gentlie entertained’ without giving any details. This is a common
feature among early travellers. They generally enjoy food, but they do not tell us
what it was.

When Sir Thomas reaches Southern Italy, he remarks on the abundance of
various foodstuffs, which are notable ‘for deliciousness and for sensual pleasure in
great quantitie.’ In this sense he is one of the first to emphasise the connection
between food and pleasure. Voluptas was a familiar concept to travellers who had
studied their Classics.

In Salerno he sees great quantities of gardens, and ‘all kinds of
frutes in grete abundance, as oranges, lemons, poungarnettes,
(pomegranates?) citrons, melons, figs and such other of all
sorts: also diverse kindes of wine verie delicate and precious.’
When he reaches Sicily, apart from ‘corn, fruits, wine’, he notes
‘olives, great abundance...’ Aranges are also plentiful there ‘and
of such a biggnes that they are most desired in Sicilia above all
other for a great delicasie’. In Calabria, apart from lots of grains and
wine for all tastes, he finds a precious type of food with biblical connotations:
‘manna, a very rare thing, and precious saffron, olive trees, fig trees, arang trees,
lymons, citrons with a number of other pleasant fruit’ and everything is ‘so good
cheape in respect of all other cities in Italy’. When he reaches the north of the

6

peninsula, he notices that Chioggia is the source of ‘all the abundance of mellones
that in the summer time are in Venice’. This will also be a leitmotiv of other
travellers.

Apart from wines and the abundance of various fruit, Thomas Hoby is more
interested in describing the cities and talking about the people he meets, and
especially the numerous Englishmen he comes across. One wonders if some of
them also wrote travel diaries, which have been lost. His writing is just a record of
the places he visited, and of the things that struck him. It is in every sense the
private diary of a learned traveller. The lenses through which Italy is perceived are
still largely those of the authors of antiquity, but there is evidence that his writing
may have been influenced by the publication of Leandro Alberti’s Descrittione di
tutta Italia of 1550.

How much did the early traveller know about Italy?

There is no translation from Italian between Chaucer and Sir Thomas Wyatt, and
it is only with the printing of Wyatt’s version of Aretino’s Penitential Psalms (1549)
that contemporary Italian culture entered ‘the English imagination’. But in the 1530s
Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder had made a paraphrase translation of Petrarch’s
Canzoniere, as did Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey.

It is perhaps paradoxical that the period of most intense travel to Italy coincides
with the rabid dislike of the country as represented by the less moderate wing of
Protestant writers. Starting with John Cheke, and continuing with Roger Ascham,
author of The Scholemaster and Toxophilus, who as secretary of the English
ambassador, spent only nine days in Venice, during which he had seen more vice
than in nine years in England (1570), there are numerous critical remarks and
suspicion against the ‘Papist country’. Some of these invectives, and depictions of
the notorious ‘Italianate Englishman’ can also be found in Thomas Nashe’s The
Unfortunate Traveller (1594).

The first book to deal with Italian travel, without being a diary, apart from the
cursory notes by Andrew Borde, is almost certainly by a Protestant Welshman,
William Thomas, who published his History of Italy in 1549. There is evidence that
this was carried as a kind of guide book even by people travelling a number of
years later, such as an anonymous priest sent to Rome with the embassy of 1555
led by Thomas Thirlby, Bishop of Ely; and Sir Anthony
Browne, Lord Montague, sent by Queen Mary to bring
about England’s reconciliation with the Holy See.

The most famous book dedicated to European
travel in Elizabethan times is certainly Thomas
Coryat’s Crudities: hastily gobbled up in five months
of travel (1611). The book is introduced by numerous
‘tributes’, in the form of poetic panegyrics, some
humorous and some double-edged, by prominent
figures, such as Ben Jonson, John Donne, and John
Sanford.

One of the first pieces of advice Coryat gives to his
readers after experiencing ‘a great distemperature in
my body, by drinking the sweet wines of Piedmont’ is

Thomas Coryat’s Crudities

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‘to mingle their wine with water’ as soon as they come into the country [Italy]’.
Coryat admires the orchards, ‘all manners of fruit’ and vineyards similar to the
French ones, and in Piedmont and Lombardy he finds an abundance of a new grain
called ‘Panicke’ [i.e. millet] with which ‘poore folks do make most of their bread and
quailes are much fedd with it’. The irony of the last phrase, implicitly comparing
‘poor folks’ to the wild birds, seems unintended.

Coryat is also the first traveller to remark on the use of grated cheese over many
dishes: ‘I observed a custome in many Townes and cities of Italy, which did not a
little displease me, that most of their best meats which come to the table are
sprinkled with cheese, which I love not so much as the Welchmen’. This will be
repeated some sixty years later by Sir Philip Skippon, but without regret: ‘The
Italians roast their meat over coals, and boil their meat for the most part in pipkins.
They strew scraped cheese on most of their dishes, and eat much garlick, which
they put in most of their sawces’.

Coryat was the first to notice the use of the fork, which he comments he has not
seen in any other nation of Christendom, and indeed he imported the custom to
England. In Lodi he notices ‘excellent butter and cheese’; the other two places of
excellence ‘are Parma and Placentia’. In Cremona he is surprised by the use of
fans by both men and women, and umbrellas as protection from the sun, since he
was there in June. In the same town he had a dish never tried before: ‘I did eate
fried Frogges […] which is a dish much used in many cities of Italy: they were so
curiously dressed, that they did exceedingly delight my palat, the head and the
forepart being cut off.’ We have already seen how frogs were to be prepared in the
1450s, but Bartolomeo Scappi, the cook at the Papal court, in his extensive Opera,
of 1570, gives a detailed recipe for fried frogs, properly dressed and prepared with
a light batter, served with salt and a little parboiled garlic, stating that this was the
way in which Pope Pius IV used to eat them.

Near Mantua, Coryat notices ‘great store of Rice growing’. Rice had arrived from
the East in the 15th century, and was widely cultivated in the Po Valley as far as
Ferrara. Near Venice he finds ‘many fair gardens replenished with diversity of
delicate fruite as Oranges, Lemons, Citrons, Apricocks, muske melons, anguriaes,
and what not’. After praising the figs of three or four sorts ‘as black which are
daintiest, green and yellow,’ he mentions ‘another special commodity which is one
of the most delectable dishes for a sommer fruit of Christendom, namely musk
melons’. These are brought into Venice every morning and evening and he picks
three sorts: yellow, green and red, but the red is most ‘toothsome’ of all. However,
he warns the traveller that one could die by eating too many melons because it is a
fruit which is sweet to the palate but sour for the stomach, and the Emperor
Frederick III did indeed die of melon indigestion.

Coryat’s fascination with melons continues with water
melons or Anguria, ‘the coldest fruit in taste that ever I did
eat: the pith of it, which is in the middle, is as redde as
blood, and full of black kernels. It has the most refrigerating
virtue of all the fruites of Italy.’ In Venice he also notices an
abundance of fish and strange marine creatures, as well as
large turtles and fowls. When Coryat reaches Vicenza he

8

mentions a local proverb which implicitly connects food to sexual activity: Vin
vicentin, Pan Paduan, Tripe Trevizan, Putana Venetian.

Travelling between Vicenza and Verona, he notices that although the countryside
seems fertile with good meadows and pastures, there is a scarcity of sheep ‘a thing
necessary for the sustentation of man’s life’. This remark seems to confirm the
difficulty of accepting the difference in the use of food in different climates.

One thing seems to be missing: pasta. Why wasn’t macaroni mentioned? Too
common? Had this already arrived in England? (Florio certainly mentions it in the
1598 edition of his Dictionary along with many other kinds of pasta, such as
lasagne, gnocchi, tagliarini/ tagliarelli/ tagliatelli, pappardelle, vermicelli). No pasta
is mentioned by Coryat, and yet it is found in numerous Italian menus of the time,
but possibly it was not frequent in the inns where travellers stopped, and since it
was usually boiled for a long time it might have looked like porridge to the travellers,
and therefore been unappealing.

Another famous traveller is Fynes Morison (1566-1630), the son of a gentleman
from Lincolnshire, who won a Cambridge fellowship at Peterhouse before devoting
ten years to visiting various European countries, starting in 1591. He dedicated a
whole section of his diaries to ‘The diet of Italy’, in
which he gives general views on the behaviour
found in various regions, e.g. ‘The Florentines are
of spare diet, but wonderful clenlinesse. Those of
Lucca keepe golden mediocritie in all things. Those
of Genoa are of most spare diet and no
cleanliness. The Mantuans feede on base beans
… The Milanese live plentifully, and provoke
appetite with sharpe sawces’. He notices that in
general Italians do not eat as much meat as the
people from Northern Europe and they are happier Annibale Carracci, The Beaneater
with a lot of bread, ‘with a great Charger full of hearbes, and a little oyle mixed
therein’. In winter many Italians ‘will break their fasts with a bit of cake-bread or
sweet bread and a cup of sweete Wine, and so abstain from dinner’ [lunch].

Morison describes the great availability of food in the market place of Venice,
where one could find ‘mutton, veale, sold in little portions and by weight’, and also
plenty of fish, hennes, egges, Turkey hennes, pickled herrings, Caviar and Botargo,
Piacentine cheese and cheese of Parma, mushrooms, snails, the hinder parts of
frogs (all held for great dainties)’. He adds that all these things can be had in
abundance because ‘the common sort eate little or no flesh, or fish, or birds, but
only hearbes, pulses, snails, and rootes, with white bread.’ He remarks that spits
are not used to roast meat, since the Italians prefer stews in ‘earthen pipkins’, then
he suddenly adds a rather surprising remark, considering the numerous cookery
books published in Italy: ‘They have no skill in the Art of Cookery, and the meate is
served to the table in white glistening and painted dishes of earth.’ Does this mean
simply that the way to serve dishes differs from that of aristocratic houses in
England?

Morison’s advice to travellers who are unhappy about the price of meals at inns,
is to carry a pound of raisins and some dried figs, and then just ask for wine and

9

bread (which are usually at fixed price) and eat one’s own provisions. Occasionally
he gives a detailed account of the cost of individual food items, as in Padua in
1593, where he saw hundreds of ‘turkies’ hung out to be sold, and where he
enjoyed some white bread, light and pleasant in taste, especially that which is
called Pan-buffetto. Unlike Coryat, he definitely wants to provide useful advice and
information to his readers, and he frequently provides long lists of meat and fowl
with their prices, adding ‘six egges eight sols, butter the pound fourteen sols,
piacentine cheese the pound six sols, and parmesan the pound ten or twelve sols.’
This last remark seems to solve a vexed question of Renaissance times: which was
the best hard cheese, the one from Piacenza or the one from Parma? The fact that
Parmesan is priced almost double the Piacentine, at least in Padua, seems to settle
the issue. Morison’s list is very similar to the tariffs which were published as
broadsheet in many cities in Italy, under the title of ‘gride’. His whole text details
information for would-be travellers and appears to be much more objective than
previous accounts. Although it has no literary ambition, it reads well because of the
information concerning important buildings and sights in the cities he visits.

Our last traveller is Sir Philip Skippon, the son of a famous general who led the
siege of Reading and Oxford during the civil war. Skippon Jr., a scientist, started his
journey through Europe in his twenties and in Italy collected numerous specimens
of new Mediterranean plants to take back to the Royal Society, of which he became
a member on his return to England. In 1664 in Bologna he noted that the market
was offering ‘silk, olives, sausages, soap’ and in Modena he had a special treat:
‘this night we ate tartufule at supper, which is a subterranean fungus cut into slices
and seasoned with oil.’

He is the first to mention pasta of a kind when he passes through Genoa: ‘pasta
di Genoa are round pellets of dried paste, they boil in pottage’. In Lucca he remarks
that ‘Lucca oil is much esteemed in foreign parts, as England etc.’ In Naples
Skippon observes: ‘here is plenty of oranges and other fruits, and commonly sold
long capers’; then something he obviously enjoyed: ‘raw artichokes with pepper and
oil’, a dish which is, incidentally, included in menus prepared for the Papal Court in
Rome, according to the head chef Bartolomeo Scappi.

Sometimes food is found in the sea, but I shall spare you Skippon’s description of
the capture and the butchering of large turtles near Malta. Their liver was
apparently particularly tasty.

Such works by early travellers have been defined as examples of early
anthropology, and indeed the sense of discovery, and the practical
recommendations based on experience would have been very useful to readers.
The fact that we can still read these works with pleasure, travelling along with the
authors, and enjoying the atmosphere of Italian cities, testifies to the importance of
understanding other cultures. Travel journals and cookery, together with a linguistic
approach, seem to be worthy of scholarly pursuit.

The discovery of Italian food in England was made even more prominent by an
Italian expatriate in Cambridge, Giacomo Castelvetro, who published in 1614 his
Brieve racconto di tutte le radici, di tutte le erbe e di tutti i frutti che crudi o cotti si
mangiano. This may have inspired his English patrons to eat more vegetables and
fruit, including artichokes and mushrooms, and can be seen as a good example of

10

advocacy for the so-called Pythagorean diet, which had a certain success among
the educated classes in 17th- and early 18th-century England.

Diego Zancani

Corsi’s polished stones

On a mission

On a cold winter’s day in January, 1827, a young Magdalen College student set off
from Oxford to visit Rome. It was hardly the best time of the year for continental
travel, but the student, Stephen Jarrett, was a man with a mission. In Rome, he
visited the eminent lawyer Faustino Corsi, admired his famous collection of
polished rocks and minerals, and offered to pay handsomely for the collection
which he intended to be a gift to his alma mater, the University of Oxford.

Faustino Corsi was in charge of law enforcement in the Vatican, and he was a
man of culture who hosted concerts and took part in amateur operatic
performances with his wife and daughter. But his particular passion lay with the
different decorative stones to be found in the ancient ruins of his native city. He was
fascinated by their diversity, and resolved to collect samples of them all. This was a
time when many villas were being excavated and
roads widened, providing a wealth of stone for the
scalpellini (stone-cutters) to recycle. He then started
acquiring through friends and agents, samples from
working Italian quarries, simply because they were
not used by the ancient Romans. To these, he
added rarer decorative minerals from as far afield as
Russia, Canada and Madagascar.

Corsi wanted his collection to be used to help
others identify stones seen in the buildings and
monuments of Rome. He had all blocks cut to a
uniform large size (c. 145 x 73 x 40 mm) and
polished to show the colour and markings on both
top and sides. Some of his acquaintances thought
him far too ambitious, but when this size could not
be obtained, he had samples made up from smaller pieces.

The collection grew in fame, and eminent travellers to Rome would call at Corsi’s
apartment to view it. In 1824, William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, paid a
visit, and in appreciation, sent the lawyer a fine suite of samples from his own
Derbyshire mines and quarries, including pure white alabaster, rare ‘Duke’s red’
marble and precious ‘Blue John’ fluorite.

What makes Corsi’s collection remarkable even today is the scholarship that
accompanied this beautiful thing. He wrote a Catalogo ragionato1 in which he
described each stone and recorded where it was quarried. The quarry locations of
many ancient Roman stones had been long forgotten, but, undaunted, Corsi
attempted to correlate his samples with those described by ancient authors such as
Pliny, Theophrastus, and Paul the Silentiary. He listed the names used in ancient
times and those of the scalpellini, and noted places in Rome where particularly fine
examples could be seen. When it came to classifying the collection, Corsi took a

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pioneering approach and organised it in a geological order to include marbles,
alabasters, serpentines, jaspers, porphyries and granites. He was fascinated by the
mineralogy and methods of formation of the various stones, and how this could aid
identification. When the Catalogo ragionato was published in 1825, Corsi had over
900 samples.

It was this remarkable collection that in 1827, young Stephen Jarrett wanted to
obtain for the University of Oxford. No doubt he was prompted by the eminent
Oxford Reader in Mineralogy and Geology, the Revd Dr William Buckland, who had
visited Corsi and seen the collection while on his wedding tour the year before.
Buckland knew that the British Museum was in covert negotiations to buy it and
was driving a hard bargain. He had even written to the Trustees, whole-heartedly
recommending the purchase. Jarrett was more generous. He had inherited
extensive sugar plantations in Jamaica, and as a ‘gentleman scholar’ at Oxford,
knew that wealth could gain favour and status with far less effort than academic
study! He offered not only to pay handsomely for the stones and remaining
catalogues, but requested the number of samples be increased to 1,000 at his
expense. Corsi was evidently charmed. By the time the British Museum Trustees
had met to approve terms for the purchase, Corsi had already accepted the
student’s offer and the collection was on its way to Oxford. There, it was installed in
specially-constructed cabinets in the Radcliffe Camera.

As for Jarrett, he was awarded an honorary Master of Arts Degree by the
University, the Latin oration drafted by Dr Buckland himself. This alone did not
satisfy the student, who visited John Skinner, antiquary and rector of his home
parish of Camerton in Somerset, to ask a favour. Grossly exaggerating the size of
the samples and the price he had paid, Jarrett asked Skinner to recommend him for
Fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries on account of his gift to the University.
Skinner’s diary, now in the British Library, gives his response: ‘I would just as soon
recommend my Donkey’!

The Corsi collection in Oxford

The Corsi collection has always bridged the arts and sciences, bringing a
geological interpretation to materials used in art and architecture. It moved, with the
books of the Radcliffe Library, to the newly opened University Museum in 1860, and
when the current Radcliffe Science Library was built in 1901, the books moved
again. This time, the collection stayed behind, to become part of the Museum of
Natural History’s mineral collections. Here, poorly lit and little used, it was
neglected; there is even an account of samples
being used as door-stops.

In 1896, Henry Alexander Miers arrived as
Oxford’s first full-time Professor of Mineralogy.
He had read Classics and quickly recognised the
significance of the collection. Bringing the
samples together again, he found some
discrepancies, and invited the great marble
expert, William Brindley to see them and advise
him. Brindley was to succeed in rediscovering, and in nearly every instance re-
opening, the quarries for some of the most famous Roman marbles and porphyries.

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They adorn many of the most opulently decorated new buildings of the time, from
the Examination Schools in Oxford to Westminster Cathedral in London. Miers then
took up an offer of help by teenager Mary Porter. She was the daughter of a Times
reporter and had been living in Rome, where she had been inspired by the beautiful
stones shown to her by archaeologists working on the Forum. Delighting in
discovering the famous Corsi collection in her new home city, she made a
translation of the Catalogo ragionato adding corrections and updates to Corsi’s text.
All the specimens had been found again, and new displays were prepared.

Mary Porter had a distinguished career as a crystallographer, but she returned to
work on the Corsi collection in the 1960s, hosting visits by a number of eminent
archaeologists. This was a time of fresh interest in Roman stone, technologies and
trade. Delle pietre antiche, written by Corsi after he had sold his collection, was
superseded as the standard reference book on Roman stone by Raniero Gnoli’s
beautifully illustrated 1971 work Marmora Romana, and in subsequent years, it was
the archaeologists who were most interested in Corsi’s collection. An Honorary
Associate of the University Museum, Lisa Cooke, has made a special contribution.
She worked with me to update, correct and enrich the treasure trove of data left by
Mary Porter, and by Corsi himself, retranslating the Catalogo ragionato, and
researching the people, objects and places to which Corsi referred. We built a
database of the specimens, and welcomed visits by some of the top experts on
Roman stone to help us correct and update the records.

The more we looked, the more puzzles we encountered. It is likely that Corsi
never saw his huge collection laid out in a single room as we had done, so he may
not have noticed that samples of the same stone were sometimes given wildly
different names and localities. It is likely too, that from time to time, he was
deliberately misled by his agents. We scanned every sample at high resolution to
get really good images, and with these, I was able to compare and verify the stones
with those in other historic collections around Europe. It turns out that Corsi’s
‘modern’ samples form a particularly rare and special collection because so little is
published about decorative stones quarried between medieval times and the late
19th century, and very few collections are available to study.

A geological perspective

Curiously, although the collection had resided

in the Mineralogy department of the Museum,

nobody had studied it from a geological

perspective. Corsi’s own geological

information reflects contemporary

understanding of Earth processes. His

nomenclature was simple, using the word

‘marble’ to denote any calcium carbonate

rocks that would take a good polish. This

included limestones (carbonate rocks Ornamental marble table at
deposited at the bottom of ancient seas and Farnborough Hall
lakes) and travertines (formed by hot springs

and in caves), as well as the metamorphosed carbonate rocks that modern
geologists call ‘marble’. Similarly, his ‘granites’ encompass all kinds of other

13

igneous and metamorphic rocks that take a good polish besides the granites of
modern day geologists. Interestingly, the modern stone trade uses the terms
‘marble’ and ‘granite’ in the same way as Corsi did.

By looking at colours and patterns, anyone with a little experience can easily
identify some polished stones. A careful examination of others will reveal clues as
to what they are and where they are from, such geological features as the size and
shape of crystals or grains, the kinds of fossils, the presence of fracturing and
veins, any zig-zag-like stylolites, or signs of deformation such as shearing or
folding. With welcome help from colleagues in the Museum and the Department of
Earth Sciences we were able to describe the geological characteristics of every
sample.

There are some, however, especially monochrome marbles, that are very hard to
identify with certainty and require the use of petrological thin sections, isotopic and
trace element analyses, or examination of spectral data. In the future, we hope to
use as many non-destructive techniques as we can to characterise these more
challenging specimens.

A really useful collection

Corsi’s collection is one of the treasures of the University’s museums and we

always welcome visitors to see it (by appointment), whether to help with research or
just out of interest. But there’s no denying, when it

comes to identifying stone in buildings, it would be a lot

easier to take Corsi images and information to the

stones rather than the other way around. In 2012 we

launched the Corsi Collection website, which makes all

1000 specimens viewable online, free of charge, at

www.oum.ox.ac.uk/corsi. The project was very generously

funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. You can

see galleries of small images, and click on a picture to
enlarge it, view Corsi’s original Catalogo entry in English

and Italian, and read our up-to-date information about

the stone. It is possible to search by stone name, rock

type, quarry location or simply for particular features.

The website has tips for identifying polished stone,

Specimen drawer sources of further information, and lots more about the
fascinating history of Corsi’s collection. The whole

website is designed to work just as well on tablets and mobile phones, making it
easy to compare Corsi’s specimens with decorative stones wherever people are,

anywhere in the world.

My own interest has broadened to other stones used for decorative purposes

particularly in 18th- and 19th-century Europe, not least the fantastic collection of

127 different British and Irish stones that form pillars in the Museum of Natural
History’s court. My own book, Decorative stone: the complete sourcebook2,

published by Thames & Hudson in 2007, was inspired by the Corsi collection, and I
now help all kinds of people identify ‘heritage’ polished stone, in museums, country

houses, churches, cathedrals, and auction houses. It is remarkable how my own

14

career has been shaped by the obsessive collecting of a lawyer in Rome over 200
years ago, but what pleasure the Corsi collection has given me!

Monica T. Price [email protected]

1 Corsi, F. (1825), Catalogo ragionato d’una collezione di pietre di decorazione. Da’ Torchj del Salviucci,
Roma.
2 Price, M.T. (2007) Decorative stone: the complete sourcebook. Thames & Hudson, London.

Reports of Autumn/Winter Visits 2015-16

British and Best: Inside the British Library and the Magna Carta
Exhibition – 6 & 14 July*

As the AOUP coach came to rest alongside the Gothic treasure that is the
St Pancras International Rail station, its passengers could be forgiven for believing
they had arrived at their destination. To be sure, its ornate and romantic style is
redolent of the libraries of the 19th century that sprang up everywhere during the
industrial revolution. But a glance to their right revealed a distinctly contemporary, if
nautical, vision of a modern national library. Viewed from the east the British Library
has the appearance of a magnificent but incomplete ocean-going liner with a proud
stern and funnel but no aft and stern. Sadly the ambitious plans of its architect
Professor Sir Colin St John Wilson were torpedoed by the Treasury, its costs
having more than doubled in the 27 years from its design to its opening in 1997.
Gone too is the famous and beloved round reading room (it is actually still at the
British Museum) of its graceful predecessor, to be replaced by the eleven reading
rooms based on the specialisms of the new Library. Their design was vilified by the
Prince of Wales who described one of them as ‘the assembly hall of an academy
for secret police’. As we entered from the north side in the Euston Road the jokey
external grandeur vanished and we were confronted with the kind of typical
nondescript brick warehouse which lines our motorways. One MP grumpily
dismissed the building at its opening as having ‘the glamour of a public lavatory’.
Almost two decades after its controversial opening one can now argue that its
design is both emblematic of our national modesty of expression (it has just
become the most recent building to be given Grade 1 listed status) and of a new
interpretation of the purpose and meaning of a national library. Certainly the visitor
standing in its civic-style piazza outside has no clue as to the cultural riches within
nor of the changes in the operational model of librarianship that is now shaping its
future in the digital age.

Once inside, the visitor is immediately struck by an apparent absence of books,
but on venturing further inside one is reassured by the sight of an impressive six-
storey glass tower. This houses the King’s Library with the 85,000 books,
manuscripts and maps collected by George III. This collection highlights the role
that serendipity has played in shaping the British Library’s acquisitions. The so-
called ‘foundation’ collections, comprising the books and manuscripts of Sir Robert
Cotton, Sir Hans Sloane and Robert Harley, helped establish the British Library as
the nation’s first eminent public library of the 18th century. The Tapling bequest of
1891 created the Library’s first major stamp collection. It now boasts 8.25 million

* Considerations of space meant that this report had to be held over from the Autumn 2015 issue of the Newsletter.

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items, probably the world’s best permanent collection of philatelic material. Taken
as a whole, the Library now has over 14 million books along with substantial
holdings of manuscripts and other historical items dating back as far as 2000 BC.

The Library’s core mission is that of a legal deposit library and is one of six such
institutions across England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Unlike its peers, including
the Bodleian, the British Library is the only one that must automatically receive a
copy of every item published in Britain; the others must specifically request them
from a publisher. This means that three million items, including a significant
proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK, are added every year, occupying
9.6 kilometres of new shelf space. The Library has a distinctive international
dimension to its collection based on our cultural, imperial and mercantile history.
This attracts overseas researchers who make up 38 per cent of the 114,000
Readers and reinforces the Library’s proud claim that, although not the biggest, it is
the most popular library in the world.

Continuous pressure on space has led the Library to build a storage facility in
West Yorkshire with a capacity for 87.5 million items; and a 48-hour shuttle service
operates between the two sites. To maximise space, items are stored by size so
Delia Smith might easily rub shoulders with Dostoyevsky. In a short, but enthralling
visit, it was not possible to visit other major collections including newspapers,
magazines, maps, music scores, patents, manuscripts, prints and sound
recordings, but the Library’s attractive web-site is well worth visiting. The
importance of access was very much emphasised during our visit, for the Library is
open to anyone with a need to use its collections and services. A passport and
proof of address suffice to qualify as a Reader; you certainly don’t need a PhD. This
openness is evident in its controversial (to some) policy of welcoming
undergraduates to use its collections and is allied to the increase in transparency in
its unlocking of publicly-held information for analysis and re-use by researchers,
businesses and the public.

Constant and rapid changes in technology have challenged all libraries and the
British Library is clearly conscious of the revolution it faces in the creation, analysis
and exploitation of digital data as well as the need to find an answer to the issue of
sustainable storage and long-term retrieval of data. Significantly the British Library
no longer publishes a comprehensive guide to its collections and services in book
form. This conscious omission of a traditional way of communicating with its users
points to a future where more and more of its material will be available on-line
anywhere in the world. Some fine exemplars were on view in the Ritblat gallery
during our visit; imagine being able to ‘turn’ the pages of the 1,700 year old Codex
Sinaiticus - a manuscript of the Greek text of the Bible, including the oldest
complete copy of the New Testament. Having attracted controversy simply as a
building when it opened in 1997, the British Library’s future role is likely to evolve
into an international ‘cybrary’ without walls, whose collections will no longer be
quantified or valued simply in terms of books or bookshelves.

For many people, the Library’s cultural purpose is the aspect they value most,
and this key aspect of its role was evidenced in its current blockbuster exhibition
Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy, which celebrates the 800th anniversary of the
Great Charter. This is a magnificently staged and curated exhibition which makes

16

stunning use of documents, artefacts, paintings, maps, statutes and royal relics
including two of the four original 1215 Magna Carta documents. These are held
back to the end of the exhibition as a coup de théâtre but are frankly anti-climactic
in impact (rather like queuing to visit Santa for hours only to find he has fled leaving
an indecipherable note of apology behind in his grotto). Far better, in my view, to
have begun the exhibition with the copies and then explored their impact over time.
Nevertheless, the story of Magna Carta is fascinating in terms of its iconic power to
influence people and their ideas across continents and centuries. The exhibition
examines the 13th-century origins of the Charter as a short-lived peace treaty
which established the principle of due legal process; it then charts its continued
evolution in the 16th century, when it was printed for the first time and began to
inspire individual resistance and empowered popular protest. It goes on to examine
the impact of Magna Carta when its ideas reached the American colonies,
becoming a key constitutional text from the 17th century. In the 18th century the
constitutional core of the Charter was clarified and stripped of its medieval
accretions and was used to challenge censorship of the press and imprisonment
without trial. By the 19th century it was being used to challenge not just the
authority of the Crown but also to question the authority of the state itself. Although
much admired by the subjects and critics of the British Empire, its message was
used to justify imperial colonisation. By the 20th century Magna Carta had become
synonymous with freedom and the rule of law and has inspired the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the European Convention on Human
Rights (1953).

The 800th anniversary of Magna Carta has inevitably provided an opportunity for
revisionist thinking amongst historians which acts as a provocative counterpoint to
the celebratory thrust of the exhibition’s narrative. David Starkey has criticised the
‘recent triumphalism’ of the birthday celebrations, whilst Simon Schama considers
the Charter is ‘not the birth certificate of freedom, rather the death certificate of
tyranny’. Lord Sumption, a Justice of the Supreme Court and medieval historian,
has declared himself as a Magna Carta sceptic. In his view, the Charter is a
document for 1215 and not for all time. He argues it is ‘one of those documents
which is important not so much because of what it says as because of what people
wrongly think it says.’

Whatever your view, this magnificent exhibition is a major cultural event, staged
and curated by an outstanding and unique national institution.

David Mills

Hampstead and Kenwood House – 17 September

‘Chock-full of famous people’ was how Owen, our blue badge guide described the
handsome area round Church Row in Hampstead at the start of our visit. And so it
was. Name after name tumbled out as we gazed at some of the smartest (and most
expensive) terraced housing in London and learned that Gracie Fields, H G Wells,
Ludovic Kennedy and Moira Shearer, Charles Gilbert Scott and Peter Cook had
been among the diverse community here at various times.

We visited the remarkable church of St John at Hampstead, which began life in
the 1300s but was vastly expanded in the 18th century when Hampstead became a
fashionable place to live, partly as a refuge from the plague, and partly because the

17

streams which flowed from the hill where the gravel met the underlying clay were

thought to be beneficial to health; the smart locals bottled it and sold it, a practice

which is remembered in the name of a nearby pub, The Flask.

The 18th-century rebuilding of the church proved, according to our guide, ‘a bit
dodgy’ in its construction, as was still evident from leaning brickwork, but in the 19th

century, following an appeal by Charles Gilbert Scott, it was expanded westwards,

and the altar moved, unusually, to the west end. It retains its elegant interior, with

its pale, vaulted ceiling, tall slender columns, mosaic floors and marquetry choir

stalls.

Hampstead was always popular with writers, artists and poets (there’s a memorial

to John Keats in the church) but in the cemetery we discovered some unexpected
tombs. John Constable lies buried here – not in some Suffolk village – with the love

of his life, Maria, whom he was able to marry only when he inherited a little wealth.

Here too, lies John Harrison, clock maker par excellence, famed for his invention of

a timepiece that enabled ships to record longitude.

And so the catalogue of names went on as we passed plaque after plaque on a
brief walk. We learned about George du Maurier (Daphne’s grandfather) an artist
whose cartoons in Punch bequeathed several phrases, including ‘the curate’s egg’
to the nation. And Daphne’s father, Gerald, who starred in a play called Trilby which

gave its name to the hat and who also endorsed the brand of cigarettes.

William Walton, Robert Louis Stevenson and the artist and portrait painter George
Romney, obsessed by his model Emma Hart (later Lady Hamilton, Nelson’s
mistress) and Two-Ton Tessie O’Shea, a regular performer at the Holly Bush Inn,

all got a mention as the torrent of names continued.

A pause for lunch then back on the coach to tour Hampstead Garden Suburb,

founded by Henrietta Barnett in the early 1900s with the aim of providing homes for

all classes of people. Walls and fences were banned, open spaces and green

hedges abounded, the famous institute offered adult education, and churches and a

Quaker meeting house provided spiritual support. Maiden ladies were provided for
in flats for spinsters ‘an Adamless Eden’ and the whole area completed in

harmonious design. Those early ideals have not entirely survived, and it is now a

haven for the wealthy and famous.

We turned into Withington Road for a glimpse of some grand houses, and then
the ostentatious opulence of The Bishops Avenue – ‘a triumph of money over taste’
as our guide suggested – before the short journey to Kenwood House, opulence

itself but now mellowed into a charming house

surrounded by a public park.

The house owes its present shape to

William Murray, Lord Chief Justice and first

Earl of Mansfield, who bought it for £4,000 in

1754 and employed the architect Robert

Adam to re-model it, adding extra rooms and The Library, Kenwood
the magnificent library, one of Adam’s most

famous interiors.

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There are some fascinating stories to tell – like that of Dido Belle, the illegitimate
daughter of the Earl’s nephew and a black slave, who grew up at Kenwood with her

cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray. The two are pictured in one of the many portraits.

The house nearly fell victim to the Gordon Riots when an angry mob, who
suspected the Earl of Jacobite tendencies, attacked his house in Bloomsbury and
were on the march to Kenwood when they were headed off by a troop of light horse
and the astute stratagem of providing refreshments at the nearby Spaniards Inn.

Later generations of the family preferred to live at their estate in Scotland, and
Kenwood was leased to tenants, including The Grand Duke Michael of Russia.
Around the time of the First World War it was threatened by plans to build on its
parkland. A preservation society secured some of the land, but its saviour was
Edward Cecil Guinness, first Earl of Iveagh, and possessor of huge wealth from the
family brewing business, who bought it in 1925 and placed in it his superb collection
of paintings, many of them portraits by Gainsborough and Reynolds but also
including a famous Rembrandt self-portrait.

On his death in 1927 he left the house, the pictures and the park to the nation.
English Heritage has been responsible for the bequest since 1986 and has carried
out substantial restoration to what is now a great public asset, which members
derived great pleasure from visiting.

It was a difficult day for our driver Milan, who shrewdly avoided a pile up on the
M40 and negotiated road closures in Hampstead and heavy traffic for the return
journey with his usual cheerfulness.

Andrew and Sue Moss

Oxford University Press Museum – various dates in October 2015

Dr Martin Maw, the OUP Archivist, met us at the entrance to the Oxford University
Press and took us in to the Museum, where he
welcomed us. He gave us a brief talk about printing
and then invited us to browse the museum and ask
any questions we had.

The impact of printing must have been huge in the ‘“Mine is a long and sad tale!”
early years – a display board in the Museum
said the Mouse, turning to
explained that by 1500, following the establishment Alice, and sighing.’
of Gutenberg’s first press around 1440, fifteen
million books had been printed – it must have

seemed an explosion of information. The first

printing press in Oxford opened in 1478, supported

by the University, just two years after Caxton set up

his press in Westminster, the first in England. The
following century, in 1586, the University’s legal right

to employ printers was established and in 1633 the
University set up the ‘Delegates of the Press’, senior

members of the University, to supervise printing.

Three years later, the University was given the right
by Charles I to print ‘all manner of books’. This placed

the University on a collision course with the

19

Stationers’ Company, whose charter made it the guild responsible for publishing in
this country. In 1669, the University’s printing shop was established in the
basement of the Sheldonian Theatre, one of the first architectural commissions of
Christopher Wren. In 1675 the University printed the King James’ Authorized
version of the Bible and Prayer Book for the first time, but not long afterwards,
pressure forced it to grant a lease for printing the Bible to the Stationers’ Company.
This lease expired in 1780 and OUP continued printing Bibles, in partnership with
other printers. The next major project of the Press was the Oxford English
Dictionary, started in 1879 and eventually completed in 1928, followed by other
major reference books.

The technical developments of the printing press were fascinating and well-
illustrated by film clips, models and some examples. I was struck by how labour-
intensive the process was, with type-setting and page folding by hand – but also by
how extremely quick and adept the workers were. Now, of course, the process is
much more automated.

I came away feeling very conscious that OUP is a very important component of
the University, both in terms of its history and in the contribution it makes to
learning and scholarship.

Gilliane Sills

The Trials of Galileo at the Burton-Taylor Studio Theatre – various
dates in January 2016

My own experience of one-person drama is very limited – a powerful performance
many years ago by Steven Berkoff in Los Angeles, Simon Callow brilliant as
Charles Dickens and those marvellous short TV plays by Alan Bennett – so I wasn’t
very sure what to expect in going with AOUP colleagues to see Nic Young’s solo
drama, The Trials of Galileo, performed by RSC actor, Tim Hardy.

The theatre, part of the Oxford Playhouse establishment, has an extremely
constricted site, with no foyer, but a small porch leading through narrow passages
and stairs to the tiny auditorium. This is hardly the stage to show ‘all the world’, but
is perhaps an appropriate place for the concentrated focus of one-person drama. It
certainly worked in this case.

The play presents the famous Italian scientist and mathematician, Galileo Galilei,
recounting and commenting on his terrible and humiliating experience of trial by the
Inquisition in Rome during the Spring of 1633. He was accused of heresy in
promoting the heliocentric theory of the heavens – that the earth and other planets
revolve around the sun. This was in contradiction to the assumption, long held by
the Church, that everything clearly revolved around the earth, which must be
stationary as the centre of God’s creation. Galileo was not the originator of
heliocentrism. Nearly 100 years earlier Copernicus had shown that it was possible
to predict the motion of the heavenly bodies much more easily and accurately with
a sun-centred system. What Galileo did however, as one of the first great
experimental scientists and using his own greatly improved telescope, was to
provide observational proof that compelled open-minded scholars to accept the
truth of the heliocentric theory. Galileo was a devout Catholic. He was supported by
the Medici ruler of Tuscany and had had friendly debates on natural philosophy with

20

the Pope himself – he thought he was safe in publishing his work. What Galileo
couldn’t understand however, was that for the Papacy this was not a matter of
scientific proof or truth, but a vital matter of religious politics and power – the
Church could never be proved wrong on a major fact of dogma. This was perhaps
the first great confrontation of science and religion. It would not be the last.

Tim Hardy gave us a brilliantly persuasive performance. By turns confident, witty,
uncertain, puzzled and angry, he presented a Galileo totally believable as
someone, proud of his work yet desperate to prove that this cannot be contrary to
God’s wishes. With no scene changes and few props – a table scattered with his
papers and charts, and the vital telescope standing in a corner – he was able to
create the differing atmospheres of Galileo’s own study, the courtroom and Vatican
gardens and project the characters of the court prosecutor and Pope Urban VIII in
their verbal tussles with Galileo. Particularly moving was Hardy’s portrayal of
Galileo’s human frailty in yielding to the court’s threats of torture and death and
recanting on the value of his own work – a denial which so nearly broke his spirit.
Nearly but not quite – as he was led from the courtroom, Galileo is supposed to
have muttered, Eppur si muove, ‘and yet it moves’.

I found this an inspiring piece of theatre. Thank you AOUP, for spotting it and
giving us the chance to enjoy it.

Brian Lavercombe

Oxford Town Hall – various dates in November 2015

Oxford Town Hall in the centre of the city is a building passed by thousands of
people each day. Most of them have never been inside and so have missed a very
interesting and unusual building. I was pleased that AOUP had organised tours for
us and I went with the group whose timing of 11am on 11 November coincided with
the annual Act of Remembrance and two-minute silence.

Our guide led us to the Council Chamber for a brief history of the building which is
listed as Grade II*. The current Town Hall is the third on this site and was opened
by Edward, Prince of Wales in 1897. The impetus for a new Town Hall came from
the change in Oxford’s legal status into a County Borough when it became more
independent of the University. It was constructed on an awkward sloping site where
Blue Boar Lane is not at right angles to St Aldate’s, but the architect Henry T Hare
succeeded magnificently. At the time it also provided premises for a Library (until
1973) and a Police Station (until 1930). It had a modern heating system as well as
electric lighting and mains gas.

In spite of this modern technology, Oxford Council was behind in social progress.
I was horrified to hear that only men were allowed into the main entrance whereas
women had to come in via a side entrance, including Princess Alexandra at the
opening ceremony. The reading rooms in the Library were segregated until well into
the twentieth century.

As well as a police station the Town Hall contained a Court Room, Judges’ Room
and a Jury Room. These were in use as a Magistrates’ Court until 1969 and as a
Crown Court until 1985. They are still in use for training barristers and as a location
for court scenes in films and television programmes.

21

Pevsner says ‘The interior is

sumptuous. The staircase up to the

great hall ends in a lobby with

columns and a lot of Jacobean

plasterwork, and the great hall itself

is large and apsed and has

sculptured decoration and stucco
work wherever one looks.’ It

certainly looked magnificent when

there were no seats or people to

distract the eye. I had been there The Great Hall
several times and not realised what

an amazing space it is.

As we were walking around we bumped into the Mayor (Cllr Rae Humberstone)
who invited us to visit the Mayor’s Parlour – not usually open for a tour. It is a very
pleasant room overlooking St Aldate’s. I took some photographs there, having been

told by our guide that no photography of people working was allowed!

The oldest part of the building is the Cellar or Crypt where the valuable plate is

housed. I found the link to the earlier days when the area was where many Jews

lived more interesting. We ended our tour in the Museum of Oxford, which is
‘celebrating’ its 40th anniversary this year in spite of being closed. It seemed very

sad to me that there are only two small displays off the foyer as you enter the Town

Hall. Although not part of our tour I can vouch for the fact that there is a very good

coffee shop there and the best public conveniences in the city! If you missed the

tour you can go into the building, look at the small Museum exhibition, see some of

the Civic plate, and visit the souvenir shop and coffee shop at any time free of

charge.

Sheila Allcock

Reports of Autumn/Winter Talks 2015

Behind the Scenes: aspects of the film and TV industry – Toni
Staples, 21 October

I learnt a great deal from this very interesting lecture. Despite its rather unfocused
sub-title it was in fact a detailed account of the job of our lecturer, Toni Staples, as
a highly successful First Assistant Director whose recent work includes such smash
hits as Call the Midwife, Sherlock, Wolf Hall and Wallander.

It is hard to believe that Toni, only in her early forties has already had 25 years of
experience in her chosen profession. Indeed, since her mother was a leading
make-up designer in the film industry, Toni suggested that her own first on-set
appearance had been ‘in the womb’. Since helping around the set as a young
teenager, she has worked her way up and now has some ten years as First
Assistant Director. She works free-lance, but has an agent to help manage her
commitments.

To someone as uninformed as I was about the making of film and TV
programmes, the importance and scope of the First Assistant Director’s role came

22

as a surprise; not, as it might sound, a mere support to the Director, but rather the
key co-ordinator and manager of the whole production process. The FAD comes in
early in the small pre-production team, under the producer, working on the script
adaptation, production time-frame and budget estimates. Then the FAD organises
the assembly of the larger production team with its designers, location managers,
wardrobe and make-up teams, technical staff etc. During shooting the FAD works
as the overall set manager, planning ahead each day’s work, the actors, extras,
technical staff and equipment required, managing delays and other setbacks,
arranging location changes etc. It’s hardly adequate to call this a very big job – to
me it sounded terrifying.

Despite the multi-faceted nature of the production process, Toni was able to give
us a good idea of how films and TV shows are made, illustrating her account with
anecdotes and slides of off-set moments from her own career. One of the aspects
that particularly fascinated me was the arcane vocabulary still used in film making,
much of which harks back to the pioneering days of the 1920s. It was nice to learn
what such oddly named specialists as runners, gaffers, grips and best boys actually
do. Film itself of course has gone, finally abandoned for digital technology in around
2007.

Despite the obvious intensity of the work with the dangers of mishaps, delays and
friction between inflated egos, Toni’s slides showed that there are many moments
of relaxation and fun. I enjoyed such stories as actor Jonathan Pryce dressed as
Cardinal Wolsey, greeting visitors in lordly fashion at Penshurst Place, when the
National Trust insisted that tours should interrupt shooting of Wolf Hall there. Then
there were scenes of make-up staff applying gallons of fake blood on giggling
extras playing victims in the Zombie film, Dead Set. And again, the problems of
getting the young midwives in Call the Midwife to ride their bikes when only Miranda
Hart was a confident rider.

Toni Staples’ CV shows that she is a very active and respected professional in
her field and we were clearly fortunate that she was able to spare the time to give
us such an interesting up to date talk, answering many of our questions, not just
after the lecture but carrying on for a good while in the tea room. The next time I sit
in the cinema or before the TV screen, as the drama ends I shall watch with extra
interest as the credits roll.

Brian Lavercombe

The Scientific Exploration of Mars – Fred Taylor, 8 November

Professor Taylor, Emeritus Halley Professor of Physics,
introduced his talk with a brief history of recorded
observations over the last four centuries. Huygens had
noticed variations in the appearance of the surface; Herschel
thought Mars was inhabited. Mitchel observed polar caps,
growing in winter and retreating in summer. In 1906 Lowell
claimed to be able to see canals that must have been
creature-made, possibly for the transport of water.

In 1963 spectral analysis showed a very low level of water
vapour in the Martian atmosphere. Photographs taken from
space in 1969 showed the surface to be much more rugged

23

than pictures taken from Earth, and measurements of the atmosphere showed the
pressure to be much less than previously thought.

Viking made the first landing on Mars in 1976 and photos showed sinuous
channels that could have been made by flowing liquid – water or salt solutions – at

a time when Mars was warmer, wetter, and more like the Earth. Indeed, the

northern half of Mars, which is lower in altitude than the rest, may have been

covered with a vast ocean. More recently, cliffs with gullies that may have been

made by flowing water, have been discovered and it may be that water may still be
present at a depth of 500m or so.

So this poses the question that if Mars was once warm and wet, what happened?

Two approaches are to study the geological record, and to model the climate,

extrapolating back in time from the present. The geological record will require
samples to be got by drilling into the surface – and that is for the future. Oxford has
been keen to apply the technology it acquired from modelling the Earth’s

atmosphere to that of Mars. However, this proved to be frustratingly difficult. Oxford

instrumentation was on the Mars Observer mission of 1993, which failed to achieve

orbit around Mars, and also on the Mars Climate Orbiter of 1999 which crashed on

Mars because of the notorious mix of imperial and metric units. Success was

achieved at the third attempt in 2006.

This orbiting satellite, which continues to furnish data, provided temperature
profiles through 120km of the atmosphere, and enables surface pressure to be
modelled using a Met Office program. Interestingly, a temperature maximum is
observed at mid-altitude, thought to be due to the presence of ozone at that level.

Looking to the future, Europe is now involved as well as NASA and both agencies
are aiming to land Rovers that will have the ability to drill in to the surface and
obtain rock samples, conceivably as deep as 100m. In the first place, these rock
samples will be analysed on the surface of Mars; bringing samples back to Earth

escalates both mission complexity and cost. A
manned mission to Mars was proposed by
President Bush Jr, but put in abeyance by the

Obama administration.

Besides photographs taken on or above the

Martian surface, some of the most evocative of the

images with which Professor Taylor illustrated his

talk were those of the spacecraft intended to carry

manned missions to Mars. Designs have changed

Nuclear powered spacecraft radically from the conceptions of Werner von Braun,
which included skis to offer a cushioned touchdown

on (illusory) seas of smooth sand, to the subsequent, somewhat less streamlined,

nuclear-powered equivalent of container ships.

During questions, Professor Taylor gave his view that Mars changed from being
warm and wet because volcanic activity, which released gases into the

atmosphere, ceased. Gases are continually being lost due to solar wind, a situation
exacerbated by the loss of the planet’s magnetic field as the core cooled.

Colin Snowdon

24

Also-Rans: the Injustice of History – Anne Spokes Symonds,
9 December

In recent years a range of films and biographies have revealed previously less
recorded contributions to the making of the modern world (think of Ada Lovelace
who worked on Babbage’s early Analytical Engine or later work at Bletchley Park,
where Tommy Flowers designed the more powerful Colossus code breaker) but for
some 40 years this has been a preoccupation for Ann Spokes Symonds, our
December speaker and well-known Oxford figure, leading to her 2014 publication:
Also-Rans: The Injustice of History. Subsequently her readers (and members
attending this AOUP meeting) have made further suggestions.

This unillustrated selection drew mainly on figures making advances in Science,
Technology, Engineering and Medicine from the later 18th century to the 20th.

Sir Frederick Grant Banting was credited as the first scientist to use insulin but
there were other collaborators, notably Charles Best; it was Banting who was
awarded the Nobel, the youngest recipient at that time (but nobly he did pass on
half the prize money to Best). It may now be better known that the contribution of
Rosalind Franklin to the discovery of DNA was crucial; the 1962 Nobel was shared
by only Wilkins, Watson and Crick; however, one requirement was that laureates
should still be alive and Franklin had died in 1958. Yet, omission continues with
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell being the first person to observe and define pulsars but
excluded from the Nobel awarded to co-authors, to the outrage of many.

‘The pioneer of smallpox’? Surely E J ? But perhaps not Edward Jenner in the
1790s – but Dorset farmer, Edward Jesty, who vaccinated his family during the
1774 outbreak; and there were experimenters elsewhere at the time.

Joseph Priestley’s discovery of oxygen in 1774 was preceded by Carl Wilhelm
Scheele a year earlier but Priestley published first, not the only occasion when
‘hard-luck Scheele’ was scooped in chemical discoveries.

As Ann noted, in many wry asides, competition, intrigue, PR by proponents and
supporters all played their part. The Beaverbrook empire helped spread the
‘Fleming myth’. Fleming himself had abandoned work on penicillin in 1934, and it
was Florey and Chain with a team at the Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford who
in 1938 followed up the research; the three of them shared the 1945 Nobel Prize –
but what of Norman Heatley and others? And for major funding it was to America
that they turned and where the mass-production patent was taken out. The
everyday aspirin did not emerge from clinical trials but much earlier: sometime
around 1758 an Oxfordshire vicar and sometime Fellow of Wadham, the Revd
Edward Stone, accidentally chewed on willow bark to relieve an ‘ague’ (willow bark
had been so used in antiquity and remained in folklore). The trade name was
registered in 1899 and marketed by Bayer. (The Revd Stone’s Blue Plaque is on
the Hitchman Brewery site in Chipping Norton.)

Instead of a ‘Hoover’, we might own a ‘Spengler’: James Murray Spengler’s
patent for a portable electric vacuum cleaner was issued in 1908, but sold on to
William Henry Hoover later the same year and during the 1900s, various patents
were taken out by various individuals for different models. For other labour-saving
devices Ann said we have to thank (even if we had not heard of them): Elizabeth
Hare (the sewing machine), William Cullen (who demonstrated a refrigeration

25

system in 1748, subsequently developed for practical use in the USA), Welsh

entrepreneur Pryce Pryce-Jones (the sleeping bag in 1876), Nancy Johnson (for

the ice cream maker in 1843), Mary Anderson (windscreen wiper) and Josephine
Cochrane (‘if no-one else is going to invent a dish washing machine, I’ll do it
myself’ – shown at the Chicago World Expo in 1893).

Steam locomotion is associated with Watts and Stevenson but the high pressure

steam engines were developed in Cornwall by Richard Trevithick (and others) from
around 1800. Trevithick’s work was commemorated on a £2 coin issued in 2004.

The origins of the Volkswagen Beetle may be traced to Josef Ganz who began
making sketches for a ‘car for the masses’ in the 1920s, with prototypes built in

1931.

Moving from rush lights, tallow and candles to the electric light bulb in the mid-

1800s owed as much to Joseph Swan (who lit his own house and the Savoy

Theatre) and Charles Stern as to Thomas Edison, Ann suggested. Again effective

filing of patents and access to funds played a major part. As was noted, nowadays

investigators work in teams, steered by committees in the direction set out by

funding organisations.

Among Ann’s recently added examples have been Elizabeth Coade (Coade

Stone, virtually weatherproof even in London conditions, created around 1770)

whose Lyme Regis home, Belmont House, recently featured in a TV restoration
series; William Smith ‘the father of English geology’ another comparatively less well
educated individual, plagiarised and even incarcerated in a debtors’ prison at one

point before receiving any recognition (an exhibition on his life and work ran in the

University Museum during the autumn and winter); and James Clark Maxwell,

whose contributions are now considered by many to be of similar magnitude to

those of Newton and Einstein.

The formal business of doffing a seasonally red cap to the winner of the previous
crossword competition was kindly undertaken by Ann – fortunately only a handful of
correct entries this time or she might have been showered with paper slips – which

capped off the afternoon before adjournment for refreshments.

Jim Smith

A Miscellany

The Magna Carta Pageant 2015

Not long after the waterborne Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant, it was suggested
that another such event should take place. Selected was the 800th Anniversary of
the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede on 15 June.

Since 2012 a team of people working under the name of ‘Thames Alive’ has
arranged waterborne events in London every September. To demonstrate the
significance of the Royal River, this includes a relay in which boats, both powered
and unpowered, swimmers and walkers take a month to transport a bottle of water
from the source of the Thames to London. ‘Thames Alive’ undertook to organize a
relay of boats from Hurley lock to Runnymede during the weekend before Monday
15 June which was the known date of the signing of the first Magna Carta.

This Anniversary has been celebrated many times before because of the great
significance of the document. These celebrations, be they pageants or plays, are

26

well documented in the exhibition at the British Library. This time it was to be a

drama acted out at various stops on the way down the River Thames. Many

different types of unpowered boat were used both to carry the actors and to

accompany them down the river. Each time they stopped, a small part of the story

was told.

Once again the logistics of getting boats on the water having had them

transported from miles away, housing the trailers and overnighting the participants

was vast. One thing that differed from the last big event was that being further

upstream, the river was narrower and there were locks through which to travel. All

this would take time and it was very much a matter of guesswork as to how long

each section would take; the acting performed by professionals was easier to

assess. Not all the 300 boats that took part travelled the distance of 20+ miles

which was the length of the relay. The escort boats changed as the main boats in

the action progressed downstream. Those boats then made their way down to join

in the final scene of the Pageant on Runnymede.

The boats and their occupants

were variously dressed in

costume. Our own boat had

Tudor T-shirts and caps which

had been saved from another

event on the water. The crew

looked very colourful in their

green and white shirts with a

fleur de lis on the back and red caps. There were flags flying from masts and poles
The Queen’s Royal barge was the principal boat being escorted down the river by

other canopied and well-dressed boats carrying all sorts of flags and bunting. A

special flag was given to each participating boat so that the River police and

lifeboats knew who was involved. It is not possible to close the river to other traffic,

and indeed a Triathlon and a Regatta were both being held in different venues en

route.

As the Queen’s barge sculled out of Old Windsor lock followed by an entourage

of others, we, who had previously been picnicking in the weir pool behind the lock,

pulled out and followed the main

boats down to the meadow and

the spot where it is likely that the

document was signed. Here there
was a salute to King John and a

tossing of oars, the traditional

salute for unpowered boats, took

The Queen’s Barge place. There was also a salute to
the organizer!

There followed a massive free-for-all rush to return to retrieve one’s boat over the

banks at Wraysbury further downstream! It took a long time to get loaded and

packed. But happily this time it was in the sunshine! Nobody got wet and cold as on

the Jubilee Procession.

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Such is the importance of the Magna Carta in history that it seemed fitting to
celebrate the event at the spot where it took place so long ago. The following day
the Queen went to Runnymede to unveil the British Memorial to celebrate the
signing of the document.

Susan Greenford

Amblers Anonymous – a Walk on the Historic Side

This photograph shows an idyllic
scene, as calm as any that we
come across on our ‘ambles’.
Setting out from Thrupp Wide, the
picturesque canal basin at
Thrupp, and fortified by a small
warm seasonal toast to each
other, we made our way North
along the towpath towards
Shipton on Cherwell, a small village with a long history dating back to the beginning
of the 11th century. Crossing over the canal bridge, we scrambled up the slippery
bank to the Church of the Holy Cross. We scraped our muddy boots before
tentatively pushing open the door, and found the inside, not deserted as so often in
country parishes on a weekday, but bustling with parishioners decking out the
church for the celebration of Christmas. We were made very welcome, and proudly
shown this lovely, historic building dating back to 1831, which had replaced an
earlier 13th century church. Its chancel screen was erected in 1896, and dedicated
to William Turner (of Oxford not the JMWT), ‘Water Colour Painter and architect of
this church.’ In the village, the Manor House where Turner had lived, was bought in
the 20th century by another well-known figure, Richard Branson, and used as a
recording studio until 1995.

History was not confined to the church and village: back down at canal level, we
could look across the meadows where in 1787 a wharf had been built when the
Oxford Canal was extended southwards from north of Tackley towards Oxford. By
1849, the Railway passed the village, though the nearest station was one mile north
of it. A major rail disaster occurred near here on the snowy Christmas Eve of 1874,
in which 34 people were killed, and a further 69 injured. In the distance we could
just make out the village of Hampton Gay, where the Paper Mill had been used as a
temporary mortuary. The village’s once handsome 16th-century gabled manor
house where the inquest was held on Boxing Day 1874, is now sadly a ruin.

We returned to the canal basin. Our walk was not a long one, but it was in its way
very typical, since we had covered a lot of ground in terms of the history of the
area. Since this was the last walk of the winter season, our Leader, David
Chamberlain, organiser of all our carefully planned and very varied walks, had
proposed that we eat together at Annie’s Tearoom. This was a fittingly convivial
walk which had exercised not merely our legs and bodies, but our minds and
memories too.

David has already planned and led 96 very varied and interesting walks, covering
a wide area, not just geographically, but in terms of history, architecture and
folklore. He intends to retire from his role as leader after his 100th walk next April.

28

We shall miss him, and a long line of pensioners owes him an enormous debt of
gratitude, not least for his patience, understanding and humour.

M. Gwalia

Six things a Bear can do with a Ragged Staff

In May last year, AOUP members went on a day-trip to Warwick and Charlecote.
For me, the highlight of the outing was Lord Leycester’s Hospital in Warwick – a
fascinating ensemble of late 14th- and 15th-century buildings including a chantry
chapel, guildhall, Great Hall, and a galleried courtyard like that of an old coaching
inn. In the 1570s, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, converted the premises into a
retirement home for aged or disabled soldiers, housing twelve resident Brethren
and a Master.

The Master’s Lodgings form one side of the courtyard. Besides the Master’s
delightful – and rather retiring – garden, one of the most charming features of Lord
Leycester’s Hospital is a witty set of variations on the heraldic badge of the Bear

Chinning the Punting Rowing After a Beach fishing Victor
bar chilly dip Ludorum

and Ragged Staff, which Dudley took over from the Beauchamp Earls of Warwick
and which will be familiar to Oxford residents from the inn of the name at Cumnor,
where Dudley had a manor house.

The bear and the ragged staff had previously existed as separate badges
associated with legendary predecessors of the Earls of Warwick: one, Arthgal,
derived his name from Artos, the Welsh for bear; the other, Morvid, slew a giant
with the branch of a tree. The two badges were first combined by Thomas de
Beauchamp, 11th Earl of Warwick, who died in 1369 and whose tomb is one of the
glories of St Mary’s Church in Warwick.

The combined Bear and Ragged Staff is one of the best-
known heraldic badges and continues to give municipal
service, respectively as supporter or crest, in the official
blazons of Warwickshire District Council and Warwick
Borough Council. In these roles, the Bear is a noble and
stately figure, variously adorned; in the poetic language of
heraldry: ‘a Bear supporting a Staff Argent and gorged with
a Wreath of Oak fructed proper’ or ‘a demi Bear supporting a
ragged Staff Sable’. It is in this dignified guise that the Bear
and Ragged Staff appears in the restoration of the pleasure
garden at Kenilworth Castle that Dudley had created for the
visit of Queen Elizabeth I in July 1575 (and which the AOUP
visited most recently in May 2014).

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It would be nice to think that the six versions of the Bear and Ragged Staff badge
that appear beneath the eaves of the Master’s Lodgings fronting the north side of
the courtyard of Lord Leycester’s Hospital were contemporary with the original
buildings, since there is ample evidence of the wit and deflating humour of medieval
carvers, and these are very lovable and sportif bears who are clearly enjoying
themselves. But I must confess to disappointment on learning that they are part of
‘a colourful Victorian veneer on what was an unstable timbered wall, now painted to
look original. The heraldic emblems are added for antique effect…’ (Simon Jenkins,
England’s Thousand Best Houses). Pevsner in his Warwickshire volume
humourlessly refers to ‘overdone detail, including lots of plaster bears’.
Nevertheless, I say ‘full marks’ to whichever sly Victorian created these delicious
speculations on what the Bear might do with his Ragged Staff when off-duty from
his more formal functions.

Ursula Ruprecht

The 2015 AOUP Carol Service and Christmas Lunch – 16 December

Whatever the weather outside, Exeter College’s chapel and hall both have the gift
of accommodating themselves to provide the appropriate mood; so in last year’s
bright midday sunshine the stained glass shone gloriously to lift the spirits; and, this
time, under one more in a seemingly endless succession of leaden skies and at the
end of a year that most people will surely be glad to put behind them, AOUP
President Carlos Ruiz welcomed a full chapel to the Carol Service by remarking on
how much he valued the picture of this warmly-lit and harmonious gathering of
friends as affording a cheering beacon in winter’s gloom.

Thanks are due to AOUP Secretary, Jan Allen, for overseeing the selection of
carols and readings, to organist Peter Ward-Jones, and to the Revd Andrew Allen,
Chaplain of Exeter College, who led the service. As in previous years, a retiring
collection, which raised £371, was held for ExVac, a student-run charity that
organises two holidays a year for children from the Oxfordshire area, put forward by
social services. The children are usually Young Carers, or have suffered abuse at
home, or otherwise have very difficult family backgrounds.

The hall was filled to capacity for the Christmas lunch. As ever, one was struck by
the warmth of the welcome for the AOUP from the college staff; and the animation
of the scene – the tree, the colourful table decorations, the lively conversations, the
excellent lunch itself – was gratifying confirmation of the Association’s raison d’être.
Our post-prandial speaker was Dr Geoffrey Thomas, former Director of the
Department for Continuing Education and founding President of Kellogg College,
who gave a concise, informative, and impassioned overview of the history and work
of this most outward-looking and distinctive of Oxford University departments.

The story of the department’s evolution from the growing sense during the 19th
century of the desirability of ‘the extension of university education’ to those who
were not Oxford’s traditional students is a heartening one.

From the establishment in 1924 of its extramural department - the ‘Delegacy for
Extra-Mural Studies’ (signalling a shift in intent as well as title from the older
‘Delegacy for the Extension of Teaching Beyond the Limits of the University’);
through the purchase in 1927 of Rewley House on Wellington Square to be the

30

physical base for continuing education; to the formal recognition of part-time studies
as an integral part of the collegiate university by the foundation of Kellogg College
in 1990, the story of the University’s embrace of adult education and part-time
learners is, as Dr Thomas said, one of the most noteworthy acts of faith since Noah
took a pair of woodworms on board the Ark!

Laurence Reynolds

Pensioners’ Crossword No 23

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22

23 24 25

26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33

34 35

36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56

57 58

59 60

Across:
1. You can bet on seeing one on the Cherwell (4)
5. You hope your try will not be this (10)
12. Do complete this crossword: do not contemplate an empty space (5 or 4, 1)
14. Other matters in Latin (4)
15. Lovers of Babel, Bunin and Blok (11)
18. Understandable emotion if you do not land a place on this year’s extended visit

(3)
20. How is your chess? (3)
21. A meteoric low (7)
22. But this could lift you from your low (3)

31

23. A pouch (3)
24. Most of what remains after the Rape of the Lock? The answer must be the

Italian three (3)
25. Assesses the candidates (4)
26. Features in the woodwind section, successor to the shawm (4)
28. A cereal product, mixed without the maple (3)
29. Sea-ear (5)
30 (and 33 down) Best known at Oxford at St Catherine’s, she has a gallery named

after her in her birth-place (7, 8)
34. The peak of Europe (6)
35. A step I take but not on 34 (5)
37. Mother is needed to form the membrane (3)
38. A large bract typically on a palm (6)
41. Sticks, otherwise he reads (7)
43. Composer honoured at Oxford (5)
45. In short, a current trouble spot (3)
46. Man’s spirit: Chichikov’s unusual interest (4)
47. A United Nations unit initially (3)
49. A mineral which is the chief source of iron (9)
52. You may have an eye for the passenger ship (5)
54. Formerly used for those not reaching a certain standard of learning (3)
55. A capital city where you can arrange to stroll (4)
56. A seemingly non-boastful composer whose other name Russians may

associate with rubbish (6)
57. What a College levies on its undergraduates (4)
58. Much used in commercial letters of the past (3)
59. It is vital that 52 should be so described (9)
60. Coley by another name (3)

Down:
1. Trims, especially disarranged fruits (5)
2. Important for the production of some sounds (5)
3. A consequence of some bad experience in hospital (15)
4. Poetic abbreviation (3)
6. Before 52 sets this, it must be 59 (4)
7. The most dramatic version is sung by Canio amid his tears (3, 4)
8. Legal right to possession can be found in 52 but no connection (4)
9. One of the capabilities of carbon dioxide (4)
10. Beautiful shrubs in May-time (8)
11. Sediment (at the bottom of your cup, perhaps) (5)
13. A combination of bran and carrot with bird (dead, of course) formed by

philanthropist (6, 8)

32

16. Many troops were slaughtered at Ypres but the singular anagram is associated
with other destruction (4)

17. Higher Certificates preceded GCE and diary entries with the examination had
this abbreviation (3)

19. Startlingly new work in 1913 causing a riot (4)
25. You must concede that the clues can be so described (6)
27. Henry Percy/Northumberland says it’s a sin to do this to the dead (5)
30. A Victorian headmistress upon whom Cupid’s dart did not fall (4)
31. Cleopatra’s killer (3)
32. As many shrubs such as 10 appear in winter (9)
33. see 30 across (8)
36. Bringing home the bacon in slices (7)
39. Plymouth, notably, has one (1, 3)
40. A Greek letter, 19th in the alphabet (3)
42. This Robert has a shop in most towns (4)
44. Beyond this you will have standing ovation, according to an American man of

the theatre (6)
46. A secret store such as the squirrel ensures for the winter (5)
48. You can find him in Ecclesiastes (3)
50. What successful English cricketers hope to do in the winter (4)
51. Remember your nursery rhyme in the chance encounter (1, 3)
53. And the attribute of pantomime character Jack (4).

Solution to Pensioners’ Crossword No 22

Across: 1. One O’clock Jump; 9. Clan; 10. RO; 11. EP; 13. Hell Or High Water;
18. Gigi; 19. Aegis; 20. Nooses; 22. Slugs; 23. CA; 24. Tetanus; 27. Era; 29. eg; 30.
Litres; 34. Stone the Crows; 37. Like; 38. -ish; 39. E’en; 41. Eddy; 43. Egos; 44. As;
46. Naha; 48. Tepid; 51. Caterpillar; 54. Owe; 56. User; 57. Themselves;
58. Marbles; 59. Al
Down: 1. Ole; 2. Nalgo; 3. Enlist; 4. Christening; 5. Origin; 6. Cog; 7. Jewel; 8. Up A
Gum Tree; 9. Chancellor; 12. HR; 14. Ogee; 15. Hassle; 16.Tig; I7.-ess; 21.Oar;
25. Ages; 26. Essay; 28. Ask; 31. Ice; 32. Rondo; 33. EW; 35. Tea; 36. Thistle;
40. Tapas; 42. Pater; 43. Ear; 45. Siren; 46. NASA; 47. Herb; 49. Elms; 50. Pest;
51. Cum; 52. Pte; 53. IHS; 54. Ova; 55. wef

We hope you enjoy puzzling out the mixture of straightforward and cryptic clues,
plus some factual teasers, some of which have an Oxford/AOUP connection. Send
your answer by 1 April 2016 to David Chamberlain, 2 Bell Close, Cassington,
Witney OX29 4EP. A modest book token will be awarded to the member with the
correct solution drawn by lot.

Welcome to two new entrants: Helen Brown and Richard Carter. There was another
‘new’ experience for your compiler in that just one letter separated 6 further
entrants from the compiler’s solution. Jeremy Whiteley, Marion Whalley, Richard
Sills, Bob Clements, John Barton and Brian Digweed – all submitted correct

33

solutions; it was, however, Jeremy Whiteley, whose name was drawn from the
Santa hat by our December speaker, Ann Spokes-Symonds. Well done! Do all try
again.

David Chamberlain

Obituaries

The Association has been notified of the following deaths. Please note that the
University’s Pensions Office is not necessarily informed in every case of the deaths
of widows/widowers of University pensioners. So if readers are aware of any
member of the Association (pensioner or spouse/partner) whose recent death has
not been reported in the list, the editors would be grateful to be informed. They can
then pass information to the Pensions Office as appropriate.

Sometimes we do not receive employment details for the entries. In such cases,
we should appreciate this information, if known to anyone.

2012
Mr Clive J Surman, 17 December, Finance Administrator, Department of
Biomedical Sciences.

2014
Mr Graham JacksonKemp, 17 July, husband of Mrs Hazel JacksonKemp, Library

Assistant, Jesus College.

2015
Mrs Angela Skrimshire, 1 June, Research Officer, Department of Psychiatry.
Dr Rosemary Gordon James (née Stewart), 15 June, Fellow in Organisational

Behaviour, Templeton College and Honorary Fellow of Green Templeton College.
(Death in Service).
Mr Angus R McKendrick, 19 June, Careers Adviser, Careers Service.
Dr Carol E Clark, 20 June, Tutor in Modern Languages, Emeritus Fellow of Balliol
College.
Dr Eric J W Whittaker, 2 July, Reader in Mineralogy, Emeritus Fellow of St Cross
College.
Mr Roy Walton, 20 July, Fitter’s Mate, Surveyors’ Department.
Mr John A Rogers, 25 July, Deputy Reprographics Manager, Bodleian Library.
Mr Rodney G Matthews, 27 July, Porter, Department of Physiology.
Mrs Elizabeth T T Lack, 31 July, widow of Dr David L Lack, Reader in Ornithology
and Director of the Edward Grey Institute.
Mr Henry G Collins, 2 August, Technician, Department of Inorganic Chemistry.
Miss Betty Colwin, 4 August, Technician, Department of Ophthalmology.
Mr Kenneth Stanbrook, 9 August, Gardener, Nuffield College.
Mr George Clack, 19 August, Police Constable, University Police.
Mr Herminio Gomes Martins, 19 August, Lecturer, Latin American Centre,
Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College.
Professor Henry (Harry) Jones, 24 August, Professor of Condensed Matter
Physics, Department of Physics.

34

Mr John R Skilbeck, 24 August, Assistant Driver, University of Cambridge Local
Examinations Syndicate.

Mrs Sheila F Wilson, 25 August, widow of Mr Keith V Wilson, Assistant Caretaker,
Mathematical Institute.

Mrs Valerie F Cattle, 26 August, Scout, Jesus College.
Mr Malcolm R (Bob) Gilmour, 1 September, Administrative Information Services

Unit.
Mr John A Saunders, 1 September, College Quad Person, Brasenose College.
Mrs Cynthia M Waterhouse, 3 September, Accounts Assistant, Bodleian Library.
Mr Ronald Emberton, 6 September, Caretaker, Mathematical Institute.
Professor Terence V Jones, 14 September, Donald Schultz Professor of

Turbomachinery, Honorary Fellow of St Anne’s College and Emeritus Fellow of
St Catherine’s College.
Mrs Ellen Thomas, 15 September, widow of Mr Robert A Thomas, Cabinet Maker,
University Surveyors.
Mrs Rosalind Brain, 16 September, Senior Assistant Registrar, University Offices,
Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College.
Mrs Mary Fagg, 20 September, widow of Mr Bernard E Buller Fagg, Curator, Pitt
Rivers Museum.
Mr John Matthews, 21 September, Keble College (post not known).
Mr Gavin Brown Scott, 22 September, Technician, Department of Inorganic
Chemistry.
Mrs Susan J Noble, 4 October, Senior Research Worker, Department of
Physiology.
Mr Gordon F Lewis, 5 October, widower of Mrs Jean M Lewis, Secretary,
Mathematical Institute.
Mrs Doreen Brandon, 7 October, widow of Mr Keith Brandon, Porter/Handyman,
Green College.
Mrs Kathleen Duparc, 7 October, Deputy to the Keeper of Printed Books, Bodleian
Library.
Mr James A Branston, 10 October, Technician, Examination Schools.
Mrs Margaret Walker Ackrill, 15 October, widow of Professor John Ackrill,
Professor of the History of Philosophy, Brasenose College.
Mrs Valerie Lavis, 21 October, Purchase Order Clerk, Nuffield Department of
Medicine.
Dr Simon D Lawson, 22 October, Principal Library Assistant, Indian Institute
Library.
Mr Kenneth W Hicks, 24 October, Workshop Technician, Department of Plant
Sciences.
Mr David E Barnwell, 25 October, Database Manager, Wellcome Trust Centre for
Human Genetics.
Mrs Winifred Newman, 25 October, widow of Mr Robert Newman, Technical
Services Manager, Department of Zoology.

35

Professor Arthur D Hazlewood, 26 October, Fellow in Economics and Warden of
Queen Elizabeth House, Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College.

Mrs Angela Tremayne, 2 November, Department of Psychiatry (post not known).
Mrs Theresa Prickett, 7 November, widow of Mr Hector Prickett, Land Agent.
Professor Brian L Trowell, 12 November, Heather Professor of Music, Emeritus

Fellow of Wadham College.
Mr James P Hart, 15 November, Administrator, Department of Inorganic

Chemistry.
Mrs Margaret L Lake, 21 November, Buttery Assistant, Nuffield College.
Mr David Jenkins, 24 November, Storesman, Department of Physics.
Miss Elizabeth N Brown, 1 December, Photographer, Ashmolean Museum.
Mrs Barbara J Williamson, 4 December, Careers Service (post not known).
Miss Deborah Hayward Eaton, 7 December, Librarian, St Edmund Hall.
Mr Gary K Golder, 9 December, Lodge Porter, St Edmund Hall.
Dr Donald Walsh, 16 December, (neither his department nor his post is known).
Mrs Angela M Rhodes, 22 December, Technician, Department of Biochemistry.
Mrs June Holland, 26 December, widow of Mr Ronald A G Holland, Senior

Technician, Department of Geology and Mineralogy.
Mr Maurice E Harper, 31 December. Yard Man, New College.
2016
Dr Dimitri Kornhardt-Feary, 6 January, Library Assistant, Bodleian Library.
Mr John A Thorne, 6 January, Kitchen Porter, Jesus College.
Mr Reginald Vaulter, 12 January, St Edmund Hall (post not known).
Mr Leonard Bagnall, 13 January, Department of Physiology (post not known).
Mrs Violet M McClellan, 13 January, Clarendon Laboratory (post not known).
Mr Frank Fincher, 17 January, Department of Nuclear Physics (post not known).
Mr Michael Alder, 24 January, Bar Manager, St Edmund Hall.

The Editors would like to thank the following for contributing illustrations to this issue:
Sheila Allcock, David Chamberlain, English Heritage, Susan Greenford, Gioia Olivastri, Monica
Price, Ursula Ruprecht, Elsie Seear, Mary Saunders, Gilliane Sills, Fred Taylor.

36

Change of address

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To:

E-mail:

To ensure that the Newsletter reaches you regularly, will you please record any
change in the address to which the magazines should be sent on the above form
and send it to:
The Secretary, AOUP
c/o Beaver House, 23-38 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2ET

THE ASSOCIATION OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY PENSIONERS website:
http://www.aoup.ox.ac.uk

Do have a look at the website, and feel free to make suggestions about what you would like to
see on the pages.

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We are always pleased to have new images showing what the University of Oxford suggests to
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