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St Edmund Hall (also known as The Hall and Teddy Hall) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. The college claims to be "the oldest surviving academic society to house and educate undergraduates in any university" and was the last surviving medieval academic hall at the university.
The college is on Queen's Lane and the High Street, in central Oxford. After more than seven centuries as a men-only college, it became coeducational in 1979. As of 2020, the college had a financial endowment of £68.2 million.
Notable alumni of St Edmund Hall include former British prime minister Keir Starmer, diplomats Robert Macaire and Mark Sedwill, politicians Richard Onslow, 1st Baron Onslow and Mel Stride, as well as journalists Samira Ahmed (1986, English) and Anna Botting (1986, Geography). Honorary Fellows include the structural engineer Faith Wainwright (1980, Engineering) and the lawyer Elizabeth Hollingworth (1984, BCL).
In 2019, St Edmund Hall launched its 10-year strategy to improve access to higher education, increase the number of student scholarships, bursaries and academic fellowships at the Hall and improve its estate facilities and sustainability credentials. This was followed by the launch of HALLmarks, a £50 million campaign in 2022 to fundraise for a new student accommodation building at Norham Gardens in North Oxford as well as student support and fellowship endowment projects.
Similar to the University of Oxford itself, the precise date of establishment of St Edmund Hall is not certain; it is usually estimated at 1236, before any other college was formally established, though the founder from whom the Hall takes its name, locally-born Edmund of Abingdon, the first known Oxford Master of Arts and the first Oxford-educated Archbishop of Canterbury, lived and taught on the college site as early as the 1190s.
The name St Edmund Hall (Aula Sancti Edmundi) first appears in a 1317 rental agreement. Before that, the house appeared as the ‘house of Cowley’ in rental agreements with the abbey. Thomas of Malsbury, the Vicar of Cowley, partially conveyed the site and its buildings to the abbey in 1270-71, having purchased it for eight pounds nine years previously. Cowley fully conveyed the property to the abbey in 1289–90 with an annuity of 'thirteen shillings and fourpence' (i.e. one "mark") paid to himself and eight shillings for his niece.
During the thirteenth century, the university encouraged masters of the arts to rent properties to take in scholars as their tenants. The university preferred such arrangements over private lodgings, which it linked to loose living, poor discipline, public disorder and fighting. Moreover, university-approved accommodation run by approved principals, gave the university more oversight. Principals leased the halls annually and had to present themselves in front of the university's chancellor in St Mary's church yearly and guarantee that their hall would pay its rent. Halls whose principals undertook this formality earned recognition as academic halls. John de Cornuba leased the Hall from Osney Abbey, a large Augustinian institution in the neighbouring town of Osney, for 35 shillings annually.
The Abbey's rent collections varied from 15 shillings for small institutions to four pounds for larger institutions. Judging by the Hall's annual rent sum, St Edmund's was a small to medium-sized academic hall at the time. However, by 1324-5 Osney Abbey had raised the Hall's rent to 46/8 while rents for other student halls in the city had fallen. The rent increase indicates that the site expanded after 1318. Letters sent to Osney showed that the abbey gained two additional plots of land and buildings adjacent to the Hall and leased it to St Edmund Hall. The acquisition increased the Hall's capacity and also gave it access to the well which forms the centrepiece of the quadrangle.
St Edmund Hall began as one of Oxford's ancient Aularian houses, the medieval halls that laid the University's foundation, preceding the creation of the first colleges. As the only surviving medieval hall, its members are known as Aularians.
The college has a history of independent thought, which brought it into frequent conflict with both Church and State. During the late 14th and early 15th centuries, it was a bastion of John Wycliffe's supporters, pejoratively referred to as Lollards. This group of reformists challenged Papal supremacy, condemning practices such as Clerical celibacy, offerings to effigies, confession, and pilgrimage. They also believed that transubstantiation was tantamount to necromancy and felt that the Church's pursuit of arts and crafts was wasteful. However, it was their early Bible translations and belief that everyone should have access to scriptures which they were primarily known for. Ultimately, Lollardism would assimilate with Protestantism in the 1500s culminating in King Henry VIII's English Reformation.
The Hall's reformist activities caught the attention of Archbishop Thomas Arundel who opposed Lollardism. Arundel witnessed a sermon given by Principal William Taylor at St Paul's Cross in 1406 or 1407 and summoned him. However, Taylor failed to appear and was subsequently excommunicated for contumacy. Following his excommunication, Taylor embarked on a career as a Lollard preacher. In 1419/20 Archbishop Chichele absolved Taylor after he confessed to preaching whilst excommunicated. However, he was arrested soon thereafter for espousing unorthodox opinions in Bristol's Holy Trinity Church. Subsequently, Taylor was declared a relapsed heretic, handed over to the secular courts and burnt at the stake.
Taylor's successor Peter Payne, also a Lollard, continued supporting Wycliffe's opinions. It is believed that Payne was partly converted to Lollardism by John Purvey, one of Wycliffe's original supporters. Purvey advocated for vernacular translations of the Bible, and compelled Payne to defend Wycliffe's translations of the scriptures. Payne drew hostility from Oxford's friars after allegedly purloining the University's common seal and using it to seal a letter sent to the ecclesiastical reformer Jan Hus in Prague. His letter claimed that Oxford and all of England barring the friars shared the same views that Hus's supporters (the Hussites) shared in Prague. The letter also commended Wycliffe's life and teachings and because he sealed it with the University's seal the Hussites accepted it as genuine.
Arundel deemed the college's activities dangerous enough to warrant an intervention and suppression. Arundel began by banning Oxford's schools from using Wycliffe's texts unless approved by a committee and ordered that all of Oxford's principals make monthly inquiries to make sure their scholars' views were orthodox. Next, he ordered each committee to go through Wycliffe's writings and draw up a list of errors and heresys which he presented to the King. The King wrote to the university ordering that anyone holding reformist opinions be placed in prison. Payne fled the country after he left Oxford in 1412.
In the late 17th and 18th centuries, St Edmund Hall incurred the wrath of the Crown for fostering non-jurors, men who remained loyal to the Jacobite succession of the House of Stuart and who refused to take the oath to their successors after 1688, whom they regarded as having usurped the British throne.
In 1877, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli appointed commissioners to consider and implement reform of the university and its colleges and halls. The commissioners concluded that the four remaining medieval halls were not viable and should merge with colleges on the death or resignation of the incumbent principals. In 1881, the commissioners issued University Statutes which provided for a partial merger of St Edmund with Queen's College and for the other halls to merge with colleges.
By 1903, only St Edmund Hall remained. Principal Edward Moore wished to retire and become a resident canon in Canterbury Cathedral. Queen's College proposed an amended statute for complete rather than partial merger, which was rejected by the Congregation. In 1912 a statute was passed preserving the independence of the hall, which enabled Moore to retire. Queen Elizabeth II approved St Edmund Hall's charter of incorporation as a full college of the University of Oxford in 1957, although it deliberately retained its ancient title of "Hall". The Duke of Edinburgh presented the royal charter to the college in June 1958.
In 1978, women were first admitted as members of the Hall, with the first matriculations of women in 1979. In 2015, the college celebrated the matriculation of its 3000th female student with events and exhibitions, including the display of portraits of notable women who had taught, studied or worked at the Hall in the Dining Hall, a noticeable change from the styles of portraits in most colleges. Between 2015 and 2017, the proportion of UK undergraduates admitted to St Edmund Hall who were women was 42.3%.
St Edmund Hall is located in central Oxford, on the north side of the High Street, off Queen's Lane. It borders New College to the North and the Carrodus Quad of The Queen's College to the south. The front quadrangle houses the porters' lodge, the Old Dining Hall, built in the 1650s, the college bar (the buttery), the chapel, the Old Library, offices and accommodation for students and Fellows.
An engraving of the college coat of arms is found above the entrance to the college on Queen's Lane. As seen in this image, the coat of arms sits above the following Latin dedication "sanctus edmundus huius aulae lux", or "St Edmund, light of this Hall".
It is a common practice within the University to use chronograms for dedications. When transcribed into Latin, they are written in such a way that an important date, usually that of a foundation or the dedication itself, is embedded in the text in Roman numerals.
In the above dedication, the text is rendered as
sanCtVs edMVndVs hVIVs aVLae LVX
and, in this case, adding the numerals gives:
C + V + M + V + V + V + I + V + V + L + L + V + X = 1246
(For this reading one must disregard the usual "subtractive" convention — according to which, for example, "IV" would be 4, not 6.) The year 1246 is the date of the canonisation of St Edmund of Abingdon.
In the centre of the quadrangle is a medieval well, which was uncovered in 1926 during the construction of a new lecture room and accommodation. A new wellhead was added, with the Latin inscription HAURIETIS AQUAS IN GAUDIO DE FONTIBUS SALVATORIS, "You will draw waters with joy from the fountains of the Saviour". These words, from Isaiah 12:3, are believed to have been spoken by St Edmund on his deathbed in Salisbury. A metal grate was added to the well to prevent injuries, but water can still be seen below it at a depth of about nine feet. Plans to add a wooden frame and bucket were abandoned, to maintain the overall appearance of the quadrangle.
The east side of the Front Quad contains the chapel, consecrated in 1682. The chapel contains a stained glass window which is one of the earliest works by the artists Sir Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, and a painting above the altar named The Supper at Emmaus, by Ceri Richards. Often described as a 'marmite painting' due to its anachronous style within the chapel, the painting commemorates the granting of the college's Royal Charter. The organ was built by Wood of Huddersfield in the 1980s. The St Edmund Hall Chapel Choir consists of eight choral scholars, two organ scholars and many other non-auditioning singers. The choir goes on two annual tours, including trips to Wells Cathedral in 2017, Pontigny, France, the burial place of St Edmund, in 2016 and Warsaw, Poland in 2015.
Above the chapel is the Old Library. It was the last among Oxford colleges to chain its valuable books, but the first to have shelves against the walls. The Old Library is no longer the main library of the Hall, but is used for events and for research.
The college library, in the deconsecrated 12th-century church of St Peter-in-the-East, was converted in the 1970s, and includes the 14th-century tower, which houses a tutor's room at the top. The oldest part of the library still standing is the crypt below the church, which dates from the 1130s. The library is situated in the original churchyard of St Peter-in-the-East. 40,000 volumes are housed within it to cater to the wide variety of courses offered at the Hall. While many of the graves have had their contents disinterred, several gravestones remain including one belonging to balloonist James Sadler, the first English aeronaut, and another which states the occupant died upon 31 February. The garden contains a seated bronze sculpture of St Edmund as an impoverished student.
Text from the Wikipedia article “St Edmund Hall, Oxford”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.