Staying the night at St. John’s College, Oxford for a conference in honour of David Cannadine, I was able to explore (and frankly get lost in) its extensive and impressive collection of modern buildings which are not normally accessible to the passing visitor.

The college was founded in 1555, but the Front Quadrangle is older, monastic in its origin, housing chapel and hall to its north:-

Beyond is the Canterbury Quadrangle, so beautifully preserved, paid for by Archbishop Laud, with bronze statues of Charles I and Henritta Maria in niches over the arches:-

The modern buildings begin with the so-called Beehive Building by Michael Power of Architects’ Copartnership.  Next in the sequence was the Sir Thomas White Building by Philip Dowson of Arup Associates:-

Beyond that is the Garden Quadrangle, a fascinating and surely very post-modern, even neo-Vanbrughian Building by Sir Richard MacCormac, which I don’t remember seeing or if I did, I didn’t properly appreciate it:-

Finally and most recently is the new Library and Study Centre which has been inserted into this melange with the utmost ingenuity:-

Finally, the dome of the Radcliffe Camera has been converted into a folly in the garden of St. Giles’s House:-