Christ Church College
If you only visit one Oxford college, make it this one. Christ Church has the scale, the history and (let's be honest) the Harry Potter connection to hold anyone's attention for a whole morning.
If you only visit one Oxford college, make it this one. Christ Church has the scale, the history and (let's be honest) the Harry Potter connection to hold anyone's attention for a whole morning.
Christ Church does not do things by halves. Tom Quad alone is larger than most colleges in their entirety, and the gatehouse tower (Tom Tower, designed by Wren) still tolls Great Tom, its seven-tonne bell, 101 times each evening at five past nine. The college chapel doubles as Oxford's cathedral, the smallest in England, with stained glass spanning six centuries. And then there is the Great Hall: a hammerbeam-roofed dining room that sat so deep in the popular imagination that it became the model for Hogwarts. Children tend to recognise it instantly.
The college is open to visitors year-round, though hours shift with the academic calendar, so it is worth checking ahead. Allow a couple of hours; there is a picture gallery with drawings by Leonardo and Raphael that many people walk straight past, and the cathedral itself deserves a slow circuit. Oxford is about forty minutes from the cottage by car, or you can catch the S4 bus from Chipping Norton if you'd rather not deal with city parking.
“Walk through Tom Gate late in the afternoon when the quad is empty and the light is low. It's one of those places that stops you mid-sentence.”
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.