Central Oxford in 1643

PRESCRIBED SOURCE

This charming image by the exiled Bohemia engraver Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) provides a bird's-eye view of central Oxford in 1643, in the brief interval between the completion of the building programme of the early seventeenth century and the disruptions of mid-century.

The Divinity School are now joined to the Schools Quadrangle to the east and to Convocation Hall and Selden End to the west. The latter appears to abut directly onto Exeter College, while the whole ensembled is hemmed in to the north by the city wall, which would play an important function in defending the royalist forces which made Oxford their home during the civil wars.

Full map available here. Cf. Loggan's image of Oxford in 1675, available here.