Description

OXFORD MANOR ROAD
OXFORDSHIRE
SP 50 NW
612/24/10023 St Catherine's
College: 'podium'
and all buildings
upon it.
GV I
College buildings, raised on a podium, including dining hall,
common room blocks; two residential blocks; library; Bernard
Sunley Lecture Theatre; bell tower; piers and covering to
walkways to east and west of library and east and west of
hall; bridge adjoining west side of podium; brick walls
enclosing canal and patio areas on western edge of podium;
brick walls to patio areas to eastern edge of podium; twenty
five short stretches of garden wall all running east-west,
some incorporating seats; paving to podium surface and steps
to east and south sides. 1961-66. Arne Jacobsen. Narrow,
buff sandlime bricks laid in a raking stretcher bond;
reinforced concrete, flat roof. Concrete paving slabs; bronze
vertical sheet cladding to upper floor of library. Almost
symmetrical layout with common rooms and attached hall to
north of central quad, library and lecture theatres aligned to
south of hall; two residential blocks to east and west sides
of podium. Hall largely brick clad, with tall aisled interior
having cruciform piers. Single storeyed common room block
with vertical brick panels between vertical floor to ceiling
windows. Library of same height and basic dimensions as hall,
but with recessed ground floor with brick cladding and
projecting gallery, clad in bronze panels between floor to
ceiling glazing. Lecture theatre has matching frame to hall
and library but has the same 'footprint' as the library; the
upper storey is fully glazed with projecting metal sunscreens.
The residential blocks are three storeys with brick to ground
floor and fully glazed upper floors; metal framed windows with
strong vertical mullions. Four covered walkways with glass
and metal roofs resting on brick piers link the buildings
around the central quad. There are also low stretches of wall
to outer edges of podium, providing enclosure for fellows'
rooms. The bell tower, adjacent to the lecture theatre
comprises two slabs of concrete, linked at the top, with
vertical bronze bell louvres. There are twenty five short
stretches of wall, some with seats, in the gardens to the
north and the south ends of the podium; all run north-south
and providing privacy and visual enclosure for the gardens.
The paving of the podium comprises rectangular concrete slabs,
set out on an east-west grid, which coincides with the bay
module of the buildings and is marked in the paving by rows of
narrow corrugated slabs; at intervals planting gaps are left
in the paving, an arrangement designed by the architect.

These features form the core of the St Catherine's College
layout with the Music Room, Master's House, the wall between
these, the bicycle shed and the squash courts (qv).

Architectural Review vol 136, 1964 pp 175-9 and 188-95.

Listing NGR: SP5226706611

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17528697

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

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  London 1: The City of London: City of London v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Old House Care and Repair