Christmas Spirit and Blenheim Palace

Hello all!
I just wanted to post some pictures of the Christmas Spirit that has recently found its place around Oxford, as well as a few photos from my visit to Blenheim Palace yesterday...one of the 'greatest in England' and the birthplace of Winston Churchill (the amount of information and obsession with him is slightly nauseating. They have one of his baby aprons on display, as well as what looked like a velour track suit...). The Palace was quite spectacular, with very very high ceilings and fabulous Architecture. I particularly like the library...which had an ORGAN on one end of the room. I wish it hadn't been raining though, becuase I would have liked to walk around the grounds.

Enjoy!
I miss you all.

I'm heading to Paris on Thursday of next week (back on Sunday) and then, by December 6th, I'm all done with classes and potentially heading out of England for good (if Dad has a business trip, I may join him in whatever country he ends up in...or else just stay in Oxford for the rest of the weekend and head home on the 11th as planned!).
High Street

Covered Market

Cornmarket Street

Outside Blenheim

Blenheim! (Doesn't it look like Castle Howard?)

View out from Blenheim

me, at the very grey, very rainy Blenheim
Are you kidding? Sorry if I rumpled your gravel, Mr. England.

It was POURING that day. This is back at Oxford. And, err, we completely forgot to bring umbrellas.

A Visit From Katie and Turkey Day!!

(at Georgina's)

So last weekend, I had the pleasure of entertaining my dear friend Katie here in Oxford! She has been studying abroad in Spain (Madrid) for the past few months, and made the trek to cold cold England last Thursday.

When she got in Thursday night, we had ordered some yummy Thai food take-away (not "Take Out" becuase they don't say that here in England) and so once Katie got a little settled in the room we sat on cushions on the floor, eating dinner and catching up on life. It was such a trip to have a friend from home here with me in Oxford, as the things we were discussing ranged from mutual friends to customs in Spain!

(Katie requested a "phone booth" shot)

On Friday, we got up sort of early and I had breakfast with Katie at one of my favorite spots: Queen's Lane Coffee, and then I had to run over to Magdalen for a while and meet with an archivist there to talk about things for my final tutorial paper. [ The Archivist, Robin Smith, was the guy who had written the book that I was reading for my tutorial...it was very cool to talk to him in person.....only in oxford....] In the afternoon, we wanted to take Katie to a traditional "cream tea" at The Rose across the street, but they were too busy for us, so we headed to Georgina's, another awesome place to eat, and had salads and wraps and general food-things. After Georgina's we went shopping for a little while, at Primark and other places, picking up bags and headbands and other cheap things. That store was preeetty amazing, I think. Then we went to see JAMES BOND, which all three of us really liked. Yay for movies at Oxford!! Around 6 we headed to dinner at Magdalen, so Katie could witness the splendors of slop dining (not to mention the fabulous architecture). Finally (this day was long, as you can tell) we took Katie out for drinks at the famous "Turf" pub. We met up with some other Stanford kids which was great fun, and then came home, happy and full of cider.

Saturday morning started with some yummy coffee and studying at Starbucks (I know, I know...but it's the biggest coffee house in Oxford) and a really lovely walk around Christ Church Meadows. Then we got Juliana from home and climbed to the top of Saint Mary's Church to get some great views of Oxford! It was so fun to see the city from another point of view. Katie and I then dropped Jules at home and went shoppping for a cake and birthday stuff, as we were celebrating Juliana's birthday that evening. It was quite the grocery shopping experience. Finally, we were back home, eating Harvey's sandwiches and waiting for the festivities to begin.

(Christ Church Meadow Walk)

About 15 people from the house showed up downstairs for Jules birthday, and we did the cake and candles bit and everything. It was really fun, especially since everyone was dressed up in garbage bags for a Magdalen "Bin Bag Bop" party that we went to post-birthday. It was a good time and Katie got to catch up with the kids she knew in the house.

Sunday morning, it was an early goodbye to Katie, followed by a very loud fire alarm in the house (no fire, of course) and then intense paper-writing. Having her here made me feel like I had been on vacation too!



Fast Forward 4 days: I wrote a 17 page paper on the History of Magdalen, a short response paper to the film "My Beautiful Laundrette" and finished a series of drawings for my Portfolio. It is Thursday evening, and I am ready, oh so ready, for a lively dinner and lots of pie.

Thanksgiving in the Oxford house is a collaborative effort that worked out really really well. I personally was in charge of pecan pie, and I baked two of those Thursday Morning (they turned out so well! mmmm tasty). Other housemates made turkey, ham, green beans, carrots, a mountain of mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, yams and apples...you name it! We all crammed into our "seminar room" at the house aroun 7:30 and had a great Thanksgiving dinner! Some people's parents were there, other people's friends showed up and our house staff (who are all English) came too. It was a funky bunch of people, but it worked out really well.

(Juliana and Jocelyn cooking the turkey "breast"...our ovens weren't big enough for a whole turkey...)

(The Veggie Spread)


(Leigh making some pie crust)


(The Dining Room)(Bustle in the Kitchen)

After dinner, when we were all eating pie, we headed to the JCR room and watched the most recent Harry Potter movie. There were lots of "oh I've BEEN there" comments as well as "When does Hermione turn 18?" and various other moments of sarcasm. It was fun, we were full, and by the end, it felt like a real holiday. Cheers.

Nada Mucho

News:
-I trimmed my bangs. They are back. I am happy.
-I saw "Breaking and Entering." good film. I think it was British. Jude Law was in it.
-Christie's made a record-breaking sale of post-war modern art last week, $491 million in one night.
-I changed the blog format, again. Sorry if this is confusing, but if I don't have to choose one style, I'm not going to.
- My friend Katie is coming to visit me on Thursday! She's been in Madrid this semester.

News I would like to hear about:
-Steven? College Applications? How's it going? I know that's really stressful.
-Thanksgiving- what is everyone doing? You must all eat an extra helping of good-tasting food for me. (my housemates are cooking the dinner...this could be disasterous).
- What is everyone's favorite color to WEAR? Definitely answer that one. Don't be shy.

So in the last couple of weeks, time has been slow and time has flown by. I kind of feel like I'm on a strange rollercoaster with lots of zooming parts and slow bits. It's all really enjoyable, though.

Last week, I was really busy with my work, but I turned it into something fun for myself: a.k.a. I sat in coffee shops for about 4 days straight, huddled in a warm corner with my coffee, computer and pile of books. I had to finish two presentations, one short paper and one long paper...all due within the span of three days. What a sob story, right? Anyways, it was stressful but I found a way to be happy doing it!

I also made myself take really nice long walks home, and one particular day was just magical. I had my camera with me, so I'll let the photos speak for themselves. It's really the moments like these that make me love being here in England.




I know it's kind of lazy of me, but I've decided I'm going to post one of my papers here for the rest of the entry....mostly becuase these are the words and sentences that I've spent a lot of time on this week, and I'm totally devoid of thought and wit. So, enjoy the splendors of my academic and stodgy writing. It's not great, but my tutor likes that it's so informative. She tells me I'm 'special' and gives me gold stickers.

Whatever. Please don't read this if you don't feel like yawning. (did you notive the double negative? I suck at writing now).


Tutorial Assignment #3: Sources and Maintenance of Oxford’s Stone.


Few English counties are more fortunate to be surrounded by a plethora of building materials than Oxfordshire. The myriad of stone quarries is particularly striking, from Headington to Wheatley to Taynton; the diversity of local stone is remarkable. The majority of Oxford stone is Limestone, as the whole western and northern parts of the county fall within the Jurassic belt (180-150 million years old) . Before the Industrial Revolution and the era of man-made or imported building materials, it was the quality and individuality of local stone that gave Oxford its charm and individuality. In a decade where coral stone from the Caribbean and white stone from the south of France can be delivered to a construction site with ease , it’s easy to forget the dangers and difficulties that the first masons of Oxford experienced while building the first colleges and university buildings in the 13th century. This report intends to give a brief overview of not only the nature and history of the stone in Oxford, but also what is being done to maintain and insure its preservation in the future.

The Building Materials of Oxford

Stone first appeared in the Oxford skyline as far back as the early as the 11th century, when the Normans built their Castle, City Wall, and Church of St. Michael. The earliest buildings that rose were made of random rubblestone masonry, mostly Coral Rag, taken from neighboring hills. Coral Rag is made of the fossilized remains of coral reef and in fact the structure of the corals (the shells and spines of sea-urchins) can still be seen by the naked eye. The stone is nearly indestructible (and therefore difficult to alter) and has hardly weathered in the last nine centuries. But not all the stone on these first buildings was unmanageably difficult and used only for plain walling—the Norman builders apparently acquired freestone from Caen to use for “dressings,” i.e. quoins, window jambs, sills, lintels, cornices etc.
Although rubble stones continued to be used in the 13th and 14th centuries, when the first Oxford Colleges were built, hardstone and freestone were also beginning to be quarried from nearby areas. Merton College (1289-94) has a few walls that are clearly still made of Coral Rag, but the rubble stone was beginning to be considered unsuitable and large, square stones were starting to come into demand for the walling Early records show that the stones were quarried from Wheatley and, a century later, from Headington. Freestones, however, were taken from Taynton and other quarries near Burford. St. Mary’s church (c. 1280), New College (1380-6) and it’s Bell Tower (1396-7), as well as Magdalen college (1474), being the larger projects of this era, were also built using the larger stones from Wheatley and Headington. After nearly six centuries, the stone of these buildings is as strong as ever, and has had fewer reconstructions or repairs than the majority of other types of stone in Oxford.
During the Renaissance, masons became ambitious enough to construct entire building facades in the “classical” style, and thus required a greater amount of freestone than before. The Taynton quarries used in the previous century didn’t have enough material to cope with the necessary quantity, so masons took advantage of the freestone that was also available at Headington. Lots of buildings were constructed in Headington freestone, including Oriel College, University College, Queens College, the Old Ashmolean, Clarendon buildings and the ground floors of the Sheldonian and Radcliffe camera. The fact that Headington freestone had never previously been used should have been a warning to the Renaissance builders, but the demand for stone caused those in the quarrying profession to forget the historical issues with the stone and falsely proclaim that the freestone was just “neglected in the past.” Unfortunately, the stone decays quickly after exposure to weather, and as a result, millions of pounds have had to be expended in recent years on refacing the university and college buildings.
By the end of the 18th century, the issues and untrustworthiness of the Headington stone was evident, and builders began searching for new stone. In about 1820, Bath stone appeared in Oxford and would soon become the most popular stone used during one of the most prolific buildings eras Oxford has ever had: the Gothic Revival Gilbert Scott, Waterhouse, Butterfield, Deane, Woodward, Ruskin and Acland all used Bath stone for their various constructions and remodels around the city. But the outsourcing of stone soon grew out of fashion, and by the end of the Gothic Revival, principal structures and adaptations were carried out completely in Taynton and Milton stone from nearby Burford. Unfortunately, the Milton stone proved to be of low quality and led to rapid decay—causing many of the same problems as the Headington stone a few hundred years before. Some critics believe that the costs of replacing the stone from this era were so high that “it would be welcome if the dissolution of these huge buildings were even more rapid, for rather than completely reface them…the owners would gladly pull them down. ” Considering how long it takes for the errors of stone to show up, it would have been hard for Mason’s to foresee issues with the stone they used to build Oxford. Even today, stonemasons who are questioned about the future of the stone they are using for projects tend to shrug their shoulders and retort, “First of all, when is the “future” of a building, and even if we did know, how on earth could you guess what Mother Nature will do to it?”
By the beginning of the 20th century, most of the construction in Oxford dealt with restoring old buildings as opposed to building new ones. From about 1900-1920, many of Oxford’s most famous sites were covered in scaffolding, including Hawksmoor’s twin towers at All Souls, the top story of Tom Tower and much of the west facade of Christ Church. The stone used was “Upper Inferior Oolite” from Clipsham, an area still quarried to this day. Clipsham was first used in Oxford at the Examination schools by Sir Thomas Jackson in 1867-8 as well as for some repairs to the Bodleian quadrangle. Clipsham stone, however, is virtually indestructible and thus imposed a heavy burden and responsibility on the mason who sculpted it. Fortunately, by the end of the 20th century, technology and tools had become advanced and automatic enough to allow for significant mastery over the hard stone. In fact, the use of manufactured diamonds in stone cutting has drastically increased the types of stone that can be used around Oxford. Clipsham, Portland, Ironstone, Cotswold, Lincolnshire, and Bath are currently the most common stones used to reface or build new buildings in Oxford.
But what exactly is it about these stones that qualify them all as typically “Oxford” stone? First and foremost, they are all Limestone, and belong to the “Oolites,” a Jurassic system of sedimentary rocks. The stone has concentric circles of calcium carbonate, which accounts for much of the stone’s deterioration and reaction to pollution. The best bricks of stone from Oxford would appear homogenous, with fragments too fine for identification (although occasionally a fossil will show up that gives a brick invaluable intrigue although very little structural promise)
Any stones from outside of Oxford that get used in the city typically “are inharmonious and out of place,” as the brick of Manchester College does (apparently their materials “reek of the north” ). With such ingrained consistency, the stone of Oxford creates a cohesiveness and character to the city that no other material or cultural aspect of city can.


The Decay and Repair of Oxford

A major drawback to having a city made almost entirely of stone is that the decay, repair and maintenance of Oxford buildings occur on a massive and cyclic scale.
The three most common and serious forms of weathering at Oxford are: skin-formation, blistering and exfoliation. Since the stone is primarily Calcium Sulphate (gypsum), it reacts poorly with Sulphur dioxide gas (which is a product of coal burning), binds quickly with moisture and expands with the sun. The Calcium Carbonate rings that are so characteristic of Oxford stone also pose a problem, as they react differently than the rest of the stone and cause distinct types and levels of deterioration in different sections of the stone. Other significant chemical reactions and natural deteriorations include warts (small black baubles), cavernous decay (irregular hard and soft spots in the stone), erosion of bedding-planes (for heterogeneous stone), granular disintegration (mainly due to mechanical etching by wind and rain), and the solution of fine matrix (removal of the fine grain that holds the shell-fragments together) . Often, neighboring stone or fixtures will erode the limestone; for example, the iron cramps that became popular for a few decades during the Gothic Revival rust and split stone. Modern conveniences such as the massive vibrations of traffic along High Street create both horizontal and vertical seismic waves that deteriorate the stone. University College did a study of their buildings in 1932 that concluded there were vibrations “equivalent to the force of a blow delivered by the daily dropping of a ton weight from a height of one foot on each square yard of the college” And finally, natural plants, or “creepers” are constantly scaling the walls of buildings around Oxford, leaving a waxy coating, or, in some cases, becoming so involved in the crumbling of the buildings that their removal would take half the stone with it.
The methods of repair for these damages to the stone are varied and controversial and the type of repair chosen usually is determined by the preferences and budget of each college. As consistent as the building materials have been over the years at Oxford, their repair is patchy at best, leaving the city often under various stages of “restored.” Most masons nowadays would suggest that completely refacing a building is by far the most economical and practical way to repair a decaying section of a building. However, complete Refacing is costly and time-consuming, so many colleges opt for the option of Partial Refacing. New College’s top story was refaced while the rest of the building remained untouched, for example. Patching is another restorative option, which involves repairing sections of a building with new stone before the decay has gone too far. Patching involves casual employment over years from a company like Symm & Co , who would know the ins and outs of a building, and could easily foresee the areas that would need repair before significant problems occur. While most of the methods of reconstruction involve the use of actual stone, some colleges are using the somewhat recently manufactured ‘synthetic stone,’ to patch or repair bits of Oxford. Synthetic stone is a fine-grained concrete aggregate of stone dust and sand. When used to repair the most recently constructed buildings, synthetic stone is not too garish, however, the concrete significantly detracts from the effect of the mediaeval buildings in Oxford, such as New College, and sticks out as a perpetual sore thumb.


The Future

Clearly the problems of Oxford Stone are far from being solved and don’t even seem to have a clear long-term plan of maintenance and repair, however the outlook is hopeful. Never have there been greater concerns for national heritage and protection, which means the issues of pollution and traffic can be seriously tackled by authorities. Scientific advances for testing stone and understanding erosion are allowing us to better determine the chemistry of our built environment and methods of testing are far more sophisticated than even 10 years ago. Finally, the information about stone maintenance is becoming easily accessible, and current clients are choosing quality over quantity as they realize the long-term benefits of the finer-grade stone. If everyone would be willing to harness their awe of the presence of those Norman buildings scattered around Oxford, and tune into their feelings of national pride in having a city that has withstood years of damage and change, there’s a good change that the buildings we see right now in Oxford will be standing long after we’re gone; all it take is information and vision.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November...

Anyone like Bonfires? How about carnivals that blast 1950's rock n' roll?How about 15 minutes of fireworks from 100 feet away? How about ALL THIS IN ONE PLACE?

Oxford has a traditional "Guy Fawkes Day" celebration where we all head out of town a little ways to a massive park and pay for a wonderful night of entertainment! It was great! We started out around 6pm, walking en masse with tons and tons of people from the city center. We had a decent group of about 13 Stanford kiddies, which was cool. When we got to the park, we shuffled onto the swath of muddy grass (maybe the only grass in England that you are allowed to walk on) and sloshed our way to the glittering lights of a Carnival in the distance. When we got to the glow of all the rides, it seriously felt like a time warp. The rides were pretty crappy and wouldn't pass American safety tests, and they looked like they were constructed in the 1940's. One ride in particular blasted rock n' roll tunes from the 50's and made us feel we should be wearing pearls and holding hands with our male escorts for the evening. Some of the group hadn't eaten dinner, so we got in line to see what kind of food one eats at an english carnival--and, it turns out, it's about the same crap as America. Except Cotton Candy is called Candy Floss!! Tastes and looks exactly the same.

About 40 mintues later, after we had wandered away from the carnival area, we stood huddled in a bunch, waiting for the fireworks to start. As our eyes adjusted to the dark, we realized we were standing about 50 feet from a MASSIVE pile of wood, about 40 feet wide and 20 feet high. 'Impressive,' I thought. 'Can't wait to see that thing catch on fire....' some boy whispered.

Finally, the fireworks began, and they were marvelous! So many fireworks, so close above our heads! Big ones, loud ones, ones that looked like little sperm that shreiked in a very scary way (no joke)...the works... It was odd being so FREEEZING on a day of fireworks, since we're used to the 4th of July.

Almost immediately after the display was over, we saw figures in the distance carrying long torches, headed towards the mountain of wood. "This aughta be good...." And it was great. We were pretty far away from the fire, but once it got started, the heat was intense. We had pushed ourselves up against the rail to be as close as possible, and I think it was hot enough to melt chocolate in my hand. I like. Is nice. Best part was when the effigy of Guy Fawkes caught on fire. Pretty sweet.




So that's how the English celebrate Guy Fawkes Day...or whatever. It was festive. Well done brits, well done.