Rhodes House, South Parks Road

Commentary
Rhodes House, South Parks Road

The Rhodes House was opened in 1928 on lands purchased from Wadham College, following the establishment in 1902 of the Rhodes Scholarship and Trust, according to the will of Cecil John Rhodes. 

The Rhodes House was erected with three purposes:

  • to provide a library of books on the history and politics of the Empire and the United States;
  • as the headquarters of the Rhodes Scholarship system and residence of its Oxford Secretary; 
  • as a permanent memorial to Rhodes and those who had carried out his Will.

The architect on the project was Sir Herbert Baker, who had been Cecil Rhodes’s architect in South Africa and especially for his villa in Cape Town, and also collaborated on the design of New Delhi.

According to the Rhodes Trust website:

Rhodes House itself reflects a number of influences: Cape Dutch farmhouse, English country mansion, and the arts and crafts movements of the 1900s. [...] Various features of the building, for example, the massive beams and the wood-and-glass fanlights above some of the doors, were designed by Sir Herbert Baker to resemble features of the Cape Dutch style of Groote Schuur, the house he designed for Mr Rhodes in South Africa."

Yet the most striking feature of the building, inside and out, is the repeated pattern, carving, and inprint of the majestic Zimbawe bird - whose profile also features on the logo of the Rhodes Trust and Scholarship. This bird is also on the flag of Zimbabwe and used to be an emblem of Rhodesia. 

In 1889, archaeologist Willi Posselt travelled to modern-day Zimbabwe and encountered the ruins of the medieval city and civilization of Great Zimbabwe (11-14th c). Among the ruins, he found a number of stone-carved birds - probably sacred statues, located near an altar, within an enclosure. Posselt smuggled and sold some of his birds to Cecil Rhodes, then Prime Minister of the Cape Colony - Rhodes had the statue at the centre of Groote Schuur's library and decorated the villa's stairway with wooden replicas, not unlike the ones visible in Oxford.

The interesting irony in the choice of this emblem is that Rhodes believed at the time that it was impossible for the local African Bantu communities to have been the instigators of such an immense stone medieval city - he considered it to be the legacy of Greek, Portuguese, or Arabic colonisers. That interpretion changed in 1905, just three years after Rhodes death, and was confirmed in 1929. 

Sources:

Mwandayi, Canisius. Death and After-life Rituals in the eyes of the Shona: Dialogue with Shona Customs in the Quest for Authentic Inculturation. Vol. 6. University of Bamberg Press, 2011.
The Guardian, 18 August 2016, "Lost cities #9: racism and ruins – the plundering of Great Zimbabwe"
Ecyclopaedia Britannica, "Gertrude Caton-Thomson."