Anthony Wood (1632-1695) and Postmaster's Hall

Images 1-2. Postmasters' Hall, 5 Merton Street, Oxford, and the Blue Plaque marking Anthony Wood's residence there.  From Oxfordshire Blue Plaques. 

Image 3. Anthony Wood (1632-1695), Antiquary and historian. Drawn, engraved and published by Michael Burghers, mezzotint, 1712; 3 3/4 in. x 3 3/8 in. (95 mm x 86 mm) plate size; 9 1/8 in. x 4 5/8 in. (232 mm x 116 mm) paper size.  Source: National Portrait Gallery D 8898, Licence: CC by-nc-nd/3.0.

Antony a Wood was seventeenth-century Oxford's most indefatigable historian. Having failed to win a fellowship in Merton, his former college, he retired to his birthplace in Postmasters' Hall on the other side of the streeet, and spent most of the rest of his life in a garret study penning his innumerable and often caustic observations of the city, the university, and their denizens. One product was the massive History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford (1674); another, the inexhaustible Athenae Oxonienses (1691), which treats some 1500 individuals associated with the University. A third legacy was the treasure trove of papers in the Bodleian which document Oxford in this period in unique detail.  The latter provided the material subsequently edited and published by Andrew Clark as Survey of the Antiquities of Oxford (1899) and The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary, of Oxford, 1632–1695, described by Himself.  His experiences during the Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration provide the centrepiece of his 'Diarie' or 'Secretum Antonii', edited by Nicolas K. Kiessling as The Life of Anthony Wood in His own Words (Oxford, 2009).