St Cross College, Oxford

St Cross College Latin: Collegium Sanctae Crucis Oxoniae UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Ad quattuor cardines mundi
Oxford, Oxfordshire
Master:	Kate Mavor
Website:	www.stx.ox.ac.uk/
Location
Grid reference:	SP51150668
Location:	51°45’24"N, 1°15’37"W

}} St Cross College, known colloquially as StX, is a graduate college that is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1965, but has gothic and traditional-style buildings on a central site in St Giles', just south of Pusey Street. It aims to match the structure, life and support of undergraduate colleges, with the relaxed atmosphere of an all-graduate college.

History

St Cross College was formally set up as a society by the University on 5 October 1965; it was to admit its first graduate students (five in number) in the following year. Like the majority of Oxford's newer colleges, St Cross has been co-educational since its foundation.

The early location of St Cross was on a site in St Cross Road, immediately south of St Cross Church. The college took its name from its proximity to these places. In 1976 negotiations began between the college and the members of Pusey House over the possibility of moving the college to the St Giles site. The negotiations were successful, and in 1981 the college moved from St Cross Road into a site owned by Pusey House for a leased period of 999 years. The old site on St Cross Road continued to be used, initially by the Centre for Islamic Studies (at that time an Associated Centre of the college), and then subsequently in the early 1990s the site was developed by the college in collaboration with Brasenose College. The site now houses two residential buildings, which were opened in 1996.

Buildings

The college is located on St Giles' near to the Ashmolean Museum, south of Regent's Park College and immediately north of Blackfriars, and faces St John's College. It is close to the Classics Faculty and the Oriental Institute.

The college buildings are structured around two quads, the Richard Blackwell Quadrangle and the new West Quad. St Cross shares the site with Pusey House, which comprises the first floor and parts of the ground floor to the eastern side of the Blackwell quad, a library on the first floor on its western side, as well as the chapel. The original Pusey House buildings around the Blackwell quad, including the chapel, date from the period of 1884 to 1926 and are mainly the work of the architects Temple and Leslie Moore and Ninian Comper. Discreet internal alterations were made when St Cross moved in by Geoffrey Beard and the Oxford Architects Partnership. Among these was the conversion of a cloister and store rooms into the Saugman Hall (now the Saugman Common Room) named after Per Saugman, a former Director of Blackwell Scientific Publications and a former fellow of the college. The first quadrangle was named the Richard Blackwell Quadrangle in honour of Richard Blackwell (another former fellow); both Saugman and Blackwell played a crucial part in securing the large Blackwell benefaction for St Cross. Most students, however, used to refer to the Richard Blackwell Quadrangle by its nickname: 'the Quad'. After completion of the second quad, it is now commonly known as 'the front Quad'.

At the west side of the Blackwell Quad lies the Four Colleges Arch, named after the four colleges which had contributed especially generous capital and recurrent funding to St Cross: Merton, All Souls, Christ Church, and St John's. Behind the Four Colleges Arch originally lay a large open garden bordered by mediæval boundary wall. This offered the college the possibility of expanding its buildings and erecting a second quadrangle, the West Quad.

Work was first completed on the South Wing on the southern side of the West Quad, containing a hall and kitchen, with bar, the Ian Skipper conference room, and the Caroline Miles games room below, a guest room and study bedrooms above. This development has in part been financed by Ian Skipper, Domus fellow of the college, after whom the conference room on the lower ground floor was named.

A second building to the western and northern sides of the West Quad was set to be completed in time for the college's semicentennial in 2015

In addition to the current main site, the college still owns its original site on St Cross Road, located near the Faculty of Law and Faculty of English. After the college moved to its present location, this site was developed into student accommodation, the St Cross Annexe. The site is shared with Brasenose, who also own an annexe on the site.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about St Cross College, Oxford)

• St Cross College
• St Cross Student Representative Committee
• Virtual tour of the Blackwell Quad

References

• Kenneth Hylson-Smith, A History of Holywell and St Cross College/Brasenose College Residential Site (Oxford, 1996).
• Kenneth Hylson-Smith, David Sturdy & Brian Atkins, A History of St Giles and the St Cross College/Pusey House Site (Oxford, 1993).
• 'St Cross College', in The Encyclopaedia of Oxford, ed. Christopher Hibbert (London, 1988), 385–6.
• St Cross College Record, 1– (1980–).
• W. E. van Heyningen, The Founding of St Cross College, Oxford: An Interested Account (Oxford, 1988).