Magdalen College
The Oxford college with everything: honey-coloured stone, ancient cloisters, a bell tower, a deer park and a riverside walk.
The Oxford college with everything: honey-coloured stone, ancient cloisters, a bell tower, a deer park and a riverside walk.
Magdalen sits at the eastern end of Oxford's High Street, just before Magdalen Bridge, where the city begins to give way to the Cherwell meadows. It is the college we send everyone to first. You will likely notice the Great Tower before anything else; it has been a landmark on the skyline since the 1490s, and on the first of May the choir still sings from its top at dawn while a crowd fills the bridge below. Walk in through the lodge and the scale of the place opens up. There is a sweeping quad, a cloister lined with carved stone figures, a chapel and its famous choir, and then a path that leads out of the college altogether and into a stretch of countryside you would never guess was minutes from the ring road.
That path is Addison's Walk, a level circuit along a branch of the river that is especially worth doing in spring, when the water meadow fills with wild snake's-head fritillaries. Beyond it lies the deer park, where a small herd has grazed for centuries, entirely unbothered by visitors. Between the tower, the cloisters, the river and the deer, Magdalen packs more of what makes Oxford magical into one set of walls than anywhere else in the city. For us it is the college that most rewards simply wandering, and the one children remember afterwards.
Oxford is about 35 to 40 minutes from Well Cottage by car, and the honest advice is not to try to park in the centre. We leave the car at one of the park-and-ride sites on the edge of the city and take the bus in, which drops you a short walk from the High Street and saves a good deal of circling. Arriving mid-morning gives you the college at its calmest and leaves the afternoon for the rest of Oxford. Magdalen pairs naturally with a stroll down the High, a look at the covered market, or lunch at one of the cafés and pubs nearby before you wander on.
Magdalen is a working college as well as a visitor attraction, so entry is ticketed and the hours shift with the season. It is open to the public most days from mid-morning until dusk, with longer hours through high summer and earlier closing in winter. Admission is modest, with reduced rates for concessions and children and a family ticket available; the visitor desk takes card only. Because it is still very much in use, the college occasionally closes to visitors for exams, ceremonies and college business, and it shuts over the Christmas period. Hours and prices do change, so we always check the college's own visitor page before setting off rather than trust anything second-hand. The wider Oxford guide has more on making a day of the city, and if the weather is kind, nothing beats following the college with an hour punting on the Cherwell from the boathouse just across the bridge.
“Addison's Walk in late April, with the snake's-head fritillaries out and nobody else around. That's the Oxford moment I keep coming back for.”
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.