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The Making of the Radcliffe Observatory’, the Georgian Group Journal, Vol Geoffrey Tyack, ‘The making of the Radcliffe Observatory’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. X, 2000, pp. 122–140 TEXT © THE AUTHORS 2000 THE MAKING OF THE RADCLIFFE OBSERVATORY GEOFFREY TYACK he Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford has long maker, presented what is reckoned to be the first Tbeen recognised as an important monument telescope to the States General of Holland in , of early neo-classical architecture. But, for all its and in an observatory was built on the roof of historical interest, its striking appearance and its the University of Leiden, followed by others at excellent state of preservation, it remains surprisingly Utrecht and elsewhere, including one built by King little known, even to architectural historians . This is Christian IV of Denmark in in the form of a - partly because of its location, outside the centre of the ft-high tower next to the church of Holy Trinity, city, squashed up against the dreary th-century Copenhagen . The first tower observatories were not wards of a hospital, and only accessible through the very sophisticated buildings, but in Claude grounds of one of the lesser-known colleges of Oxford Perrault, himself a scientist, built a more elaborate University. It is also perhaps because of its unusual observatory at Paris which still survives in an altered functions and complicated building history, both of form; it was a two-storeyed structure with a flat roof, which repay investigation. projections at the corners for the telescopes, a room According to Anthony Wood the first observatory for larger astronomical instruments, and a meeting in Oxford was the ancient medieval gatehouse known room for the members of Colbert’s recently-established as Friar Bacon’s Study, guarding the southern approach Académie des Sciences. Then in the Royal to the city at Folly Bridge; here, according to legend, Observatory was built at Greenwich to the designs of the Friar ‘did sometimes use the night season to ascend Christopher Wren, who held the Savilian chair in this place ... and there to take the altitude and distance Oxford from to . It contained an octagonal of the stars’ . But the recorded, as opposed to the observing room for movable telescopes, rooms on mythical, history of observatories in Oxford begins either side for the fixed instruments, and lodgings for with the foundation of the Savilian Professorship of the Astronomer Royal, who needed to be on hand in Astronomy in . No purpose-built observatory was order to make night-time observations; the longer supplied by the University, but the first Professor, John telescopes, including one of ft, were mounted on Bainbridge, was allowed to use the top room of the poles in the garden. gate tower of the newly-erected Schools Quadrangle, There is no indication that Wren ever intended completed structurally in the very year of the foundation an observatory of this kind for Oxford, and, in a letter of the professorship, and Bainbridge’s successor John to John Fell, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, on Greaves kept a collection of telescopes and other December , he said that an adequate observatory instruments there. could be placed ‘as well in a garden as a tower’ and The creation of the professorship came just need consist of no more than a ‘little house of boards’ before the first observatories designed for telescopes ft square and ft high with a detachable roof ; it were erected. Hans Lippersky of Middelburg, a lens- could house a telescope, a mural quadrant and a THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X THE MAKING OF THE RADCLIFFE OBSERVATORY ‘quadrant to take distances’. Such a utilitarian Paris observatory, on an east-west axis. And, since structure was in fact built in by the then Savilian some of the instruments rotated on an arc of Professor, Edward Halley, on the roof of his official degrees, there had to be shutter openings in the walls residence in New College Lane, where it can still be and roof. Hornsby also requested a ‘large room for seen . It was presumably adequate for observations experimental philosophy’, which he suggested might made through smaller telescopes, but James Bradley, be placed over his new official residence; above it who succeeded Halley in , complained that there there would be another room of the same size for were not enough instruments in Oxford to enable ‘occasional observations in any part of the Heavens’, him to carry out his research properly, or a building housing the movable refracting telescopes used for capable of housing his own instruments, which such observations . This implied the building of a included a -ft telescope . His successor, Thomas three-storeyed tower observatory, perhaps not unlike Hornsby, solved the problem temporarily by creating that built at Berlin in – , as well as a lower an observatory of his own at Corpus Christi College, adjacent building for the large instruments. The total but this was clearly no more than a stop-gap solution, cost, including the ground and the instruments was and in he petitioned the Radcliffe Trustees for estimated by Hornsby at £ , or £ , , a sum money to build a proper observatory out of the which was to be greatly exceeded. interest on the property left to Oxford University in The first step towards the construction of the by the physician John Radcliffe . This gift ‒ one new observatory took place in , when the Trustees of the most generous in Oxford’s history ‒ had already resolved to ask the Lord Chancellor for permission enabled the construction of James Gibbs’s Radcliffe to use the Radcliffe funds to buy ‘a piece of ground Library (now known as the Radcliffe Camera) and, and to erect thereon a large Observatory Room for more recently, the Radcliffe Infirmary, a more the use of the Savilian Professor of Astronomy to pedestrian building of – by Stiff Leadbetter . read courses of lectures; and to purchase such It now enabled the University to erect, at no cost to mathematical instruments as are proper to be used itself, the finest of all eighteenth-century observatories. there’ . The ground was to the north of the city’s In his initial letter to the Radcliffe Trustees, built-up area, alongside the road to Woodstock and Hornsby set out his requirements for the building . beyond the Infirmary (Fig. ); it had been leased There should first of all be a building at ground level from St John’s College in by the th Duke of for the larger instruments which, in his own words, Marlborough, an enthusiast for astronomy . ‘must be placed on the ground and fixed to the plane Permission was granted, and designs procured from of the meridian’; they comprised quadrants, a zenith Henry Keene, an architect much favoured by Oxford sector (a long telescope fixed to a wall and pointing University in the previous decade, with work at Christ out of a roof) and a transit instrument (a revolving Church, University College and Balliol College to his telescope), all of which were needed to measure the credit . The Professor’s official lodgings were now position and movements of the heavenly bodies ‒ to be placed in a separate house away from the main seen then as a prime task of astronomy, not least for structure, which would be devoted entirely to scientific its value in assisting navigation. The instruments had research and teaching, and the cost was estimated to be fixed to piers firmly embedded into the ground upwards to £ , , including the astronomical in order to minimise movement, and they had to be instruments, which were, in the event, paid for out of aligned with the meridian so as to supply a fixed line a windfall from the Clarendon Press . Keene met the from which observations could begin. So the building Radcliffe Trustees on January and showed had to be a single-storeyed structure aligned, like the them his designs, which do not appear to have THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X THE MAKING OF THE RADCLIFFE OBSERVATORY Fig. The site of the Observatory. Ordnance Survey . Fig. The Observatory from the south-east, from R. Ackermann, History of the University of Oxford, . Green College, Oxford. THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X THE MAKING OF THE RADCLIFFE OBSERVATORY survived, on March; the foundation stone was laid where no-one could see it, and urging that the new in June of the same year . building should ‘reflect grandeur and magnificence Keene’s appointment may have come about in Oxford’ . through the influence of the rd Earl of Lichfield, Wyatt’s architecture certainly had the merit of chairman of the Radcliffe Trustees and Chancellor of boldness and novelty after the tame neo-Palladianism the University, and it was Keene who designed Lord of buildings like the nearby Infirmary. Both the Lichfield’s impressive monument in Spelsbury church, Pantheon assembly room in Oxford Street, London near his country seat at Ditchley (Oxfordshire). When ( ) and Heaton Hall near Manchester, begun at Lichfield died on September he was replaced, about the same time, showed that he was capable of both as chairman of the Trustees and Chancellor of reinterpreting the classical language of architecture the University, by another Oxfordshire nobleman, and ornament in an engaging and original way, making Lord North, of Wroxton Abbey, M.P. for Banbury him a credible rival to the older and better-established and Prime Minister since , and in March Adam brothers, who built nothing in either of the two the trustees were shown another elevation for the ancient English universities. Like the Adams, Wyatt Observatory, which they approved. Keene was then was adept at displacing established architects, and in ordered to give an account of the work already done Oxford the victim was Keene, whom he superseded and told not to proceed further, though he carried on not only at the Observatory but also at Christ Church, as builder when work resumed .
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