11. Gardens and grounds

11.1 GENERAL

Magdalen has the most extensive private grounds of the Oxford Colleges and has long been famed for its grove, or deer park, its water-walks along the Cherwell and the fritillaries in the meadow. When the College succeeded to the site of St John's Hospital it acquired the hospital's physic garden, orchards amd fishponds, and the gardens and riverside walks are clearly shown in the Agas map of Oxford, dated 1578. Fortifications erected in the grounds during the Civil War became an adornment, notably the banked walks leading to the bastion known as Dover Pier. These were the paths beloved by Joseph Addison (Fellow 1697-1711), author and editor of the Spectator and an early advocate of 'natural' gardening; he was particularly fond of the water-walks, known since the nineteenth century in his honour as 'Addison's Walk'. Designs for alterations to the grounds in the romantic Gothic mode, made by Humphry Repton in 1801, were rejected by the College; Repton's suggestion that the meadows should be flooded would have added to their picturesque effect, but would also have deprived the College of the fritillaries for which the meadows are famed in spring.

Fallow deer were probably introduced into the Grove in the early years of the eighteenth century; the earliest reference to deer in the College accounts is in 1705. Before that date there had been formal avenues for recreation, but from the eighteenth century a more informal and naturalistic planting of trees produced a sylvan effect until the Dutch elm disease drastically reduced the number of specimens. In 1756, the area behind New Buildings also contained a bowling green and gardens. Other animals and birds have been kept from time to time, including swans (1490-1904), a she-bear (1509), peacocks (c. 1852-6) and an emu (1884). A gift of ostriches was declined in 1894 (Macray, Register, vol. 8, Index).

There was a revival of interest in the flower borders and Fellows' garden from the 1930s, perhaps attributable to Professor Tansley, 'the father of modern ecology' who was Sherardian Professor of Botany and Fellow of Magdalen from 1927 to 1937. In October 1936 the College appointed G. R. S. Snow as Garden Master, probably the first Garden Master at Magdalen. This post was not a College Office in the strict sense, however, and the Bursarial Committee continued to have responsibility for the Grove, meadows and walks, the commercial market garden in Marston Road, for 'trees and tree-like shrubs' and the gardeners. The former layout of the gardens and grounds can be seen in Loggan's Oxonia Illustrata and Williams' Oxonia Depicta, sive collegiorum et aularum in inclyta academia Oxoniensi… (No place, publisher or date [Oxford, 1733]). Traces of the former avenues and other features are still discernible in aerial photographs and the line of planting has recently been confirmed by a resistivity survey.

There is material on the gardens and grounds in Buckler, Observations, and information on the Grove in Evelyn Philip Shirley, Some Account of English Deer Parks (London: John Murray, 1867), p.36. Wilson added an appendix on the College grounds to his history, Magdalen College, and R. T. Günther, Oxford Gardens…with Notes on the Gardens of the Colleges and on the University Parks (Oxford: Parker & Son, 1912) has a useful section on Magdalen College. For more recent research see Mavis Batey, The Historic Gardens of Oxford and Cambridge (London: Macmillan, 1989). Articles in the Magdalen College Record include Brenda Parry-Jones, 'The Addison Gates and their acquisition' (1988), 42-4.. The Bursarial Committee Proceedings are the main source from 1885 (see Section 4.2.2), notwithstanding the creation of a joint Fabric and Grounds Committee in 1943 (for which there are no minutes or proceedings in the archives). For 1786-1885 see the indexes to the Acta of the College Meeting, Section 4.2.2. For the Garden Master see Section 4.3.1.

See also now Roger White and Robin Darwall-Smith, The Architectural Drawings of Magdalen College Oxford: A Catalogue (Oxford, 2001) and L. W. B. Brockliss (ed.), Magdalen College Oxford: A History (Oxford, 2008). There are also four major articles by John Steane on the history of the gardens and grounds of Magdalen College in the Magdalen College Record for 1997-2000.

See Repton's Red Book, 1801 - FA16/4/1AD/1 (transcript by John Phibbs, 2017, also available).

Note: For the Botanic Garden, whose site belonged to Magdalen College, see Section 15.

11.2 PLANS, DRAWINGS AND SURVEYS

CP/3/15, p. 178 Survey by Lewis Andrewes (c. 1677)

FA14/1/3AD/4 Sketch plan of grounds, probably by Edward Holdsworth (n.d. [c. 1730])

FA12/3/1M/1-6 Plans of Magdalen Grove by Tandy & Farr for Professor Tansley, 1932. With duplicate copies, some annotated in 1934 (1932-4)

ES/5/14 File of material including:

Sketch plan of Magdalen meadow (1941)

Diagrammatic plan of Fellows' Garden (1943)

Sketch of meadow and River walks, with enlarged sketch of Duckery (1943)

Annotated copy of 1732 Tandy map (1943)

Other sketches of gardens and grounds (c. 1940s)

11.3 PLANTING SCHEMES

MS 1070 Memoranda book: contents include notes on College garden (c. 1852-8)

FA12/3/1M/1-6 Plans of the Grove (1932)

MP/3/146/1 Pre-planting plan of Grove (n. d.)

ES/5/14 Notes on existing shrubs and trees, and suggestions for planting (c. 1940-5**)**

Note: Records for planting schemes c 1989- are held by the Head Gardener (CB, Apr 2018).

11.4 DEER HERD RECORDS

Very few deer records are kept in the archives. Official herd records from c 1989 are held by the Head Gardener (CB, Apr 2018).

BUP/1/1 Register of the Deer Herd Book Society (Magdalen entry on p. 18) (1932)

Acc02/10/24/1-3 Correspondence relating to deer herds, 1947-1988

PRC/4/11 Presidential correspondence relating to deer, 1958-1978

Acc10/128 File relating to deer herd, 1998-2005

11.5 ACCOUNTS

The basic source is the series of Libri Computi, or annual account books in Latin: see Section 8.2.2. Bloxam (MS 732) and Günther, Oxford Gardens include extracts from the Libri Computi relating to the gardens.

LCE/1-178 Libri Computi, annual entries: sections dealing with the walks, grove, and meadows (1480-1883)

EP/230/12, EP/234/12, 14, EP/237/13, EP/238/4, EP/240/3

Vouchers for payment include itemized bills from nurseries and from workmen (1867-72)

DBJ/1-153 Day journals - volumes c 1820 include meadow accounts for the grounds (1652-1881)

AO/51 Estate ledgers (1883-99)

AO/8 Estates cash and contra ledgers (1902-50)

Note: Not all bundles of vouchers have been searched; other bundles in the series 1860-84 might be relevant; see Woolgar, 'Catalogue', 147-8.

11.6 CORRESPONDENCE AND REPORTS

P274/C1/6 & MS 800 Report of the blowing down of the great oak (1789)

CP/9/25 Notebook contains extracts from College Orders relating to the President's gardens (1822-5)

MS 912 Copy letter from President Routh, mentioning the loss of 5 elms planted in 1647 (1852)

P273/C1/1 Letter describing the Grove (1860)

MS 922 Press cutting re death of an emu (n.d. [c. 1885])

CP/9/25 Includes (inter alia) notes on the garden (n.d. [late 19th cent.])

CMR/4/14 Report on the College garden from the OU Rural Economy Unit (1934)

ES/5/14 Garden file (1932-45)

CP/9/80 File on the removal of Addison's gates from from Bilton Grange, and their re-erection in the water walks (1950s)

11.7 PRINTS AND DRAWINGS

FA1/7/5P/1 Agas map (re-engraving from 1728 of 1578 original)

FA1/7/1P/3 College from the Grove (Almanack Illustration), M. A. Rooker (1787)

FA1/7/1P/6-7 Almanack illustration (1812)

E/3/13 Sketch [by Duncan] and verse on the cedar tree planted by President Routh in 1848 and removed 1884 (1848)

A/1/17 Magdalen Cricket ground, by L. V. Richardson (n.d.)

11.8 PHOTOGRAPHS

(a) Albums

A number of the albums in the photographic collection include photographs of the grounds. See in particular the following:

CR/2/4 Taunt album (late 19th-early 20th cents)

P296/P1/1 Birchall album (c. 1896-1900)

P201/P1/1 Debenham album (1884-8)

More can by found by searching on the Adlib database.

(b) Loose photographs

B/4/28 Photo of fallen tree with choristers (n.d. [19th cent.])

P320/P4/1-3 Magdalen meadows flooded (1911/12)

FA1/11/6P/1-9 Bundle of undated photographs of gardens (n.d.[?20th cent.])

B/14/19 Colour print of fritillaries in bloom (n.d. [20th cent.])

PH/P/578 Photograph of Addison's Walk with young trees (n.d. [c. 1880s])

11.9 PRINTED MATTER

MS 1006 Article by J. D. U. Ward, 'Landscape comes to Oxford', The Architectural Review (May 1948)

BUP/1/1 Register of the Deer Herd Book Society (Magdalen entry on p. 18) (1932)

P85/P1/1 Photograph of Magdalen fawn by Steve Foster, Deer, 10: 3 (1997)

Hutchins, Roger Article, 'Tensions in the Deer Park', College Record (1996), 96-102

Article, 'The deer in transition', College Record (1998), 36-37

Peter Vernier Article, 'Magdalen's royal deer', College Record (1998), 110-113

Stephen Foster Article, 'The deer in turmoil', College Record (1999), 90-92