Christ Church, Oxford, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Christ Church was founded by Cardinal Wolsey in 1525, as Cardinal College, the buildings straddling the site of the south City Wall, partly on the site of St Frideswide's Priory which Wolsey had suppressed in 1524. Various college buildings, including the Hall and the south side of Tom Quadrangle, together with parts of the west and east ranges, were completed by the time of Wolsey's fall in 1529, the buildings bounded to the south by open water meadows. Henry VIII refounded the college in 1546 as a unique joint foundation of cathedral and college, renaming it Christ Church and incorporating various priory buildings, including the church, as Christ Church Cathedral. By the 1570s a perimeter walk had been established, running around much of the meadow as far south as the River Thames, marked on Agas' map of 1578 by a double row of trees and named as 'Christ Church Medows and Walkes'. By 1675 (map, Loggan) what later became known as the Broad Walk was established, and Tom Quad had been completed except for the tower, which was completed by Sir Christopher Wren in the early 1680s. Loggan shows the terrace around the inner edge of the Quad, together with a central pool and fountain, and the Broad Walk in its current position in the Meadow, named as 'new walks'. Earthworks had been erected approximately along the line of the Broad Walk during the Civil War in the 1640s. Peckwater Quad was built from 1705-14, and Meadow Buildings from 1862-6. In 1863 Dean Liddell (Dean 1855-91) laid out the straight New Walk running south through the Meadow to the river, in line with the centre of the south front of Meadow Buildings, and opened in 1872 by Princess Louise. Charles Dodgson, alias Lewis Carroll, lived at Christ Church for forty-seven years from 1851, writing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and other books during the 1860s and 1870s, taking Dean Liddell's daughter, Alice, as his inspiration. The site remains (1997) in college use.