Henry II banned English students from studying at the University of Paris in 1167. It’s a random blip in history, stemming from a larger war, and yet oddly important to collegiate architecture. It spawned an increase in higher education available in England, centered around Oxford, a town where records show evidence of some sort of teaching from Norman times. The next few centuries were a time of growth in the town as new colleges & academic buildings were constructed in the Gothic style.
In 1209, during a tumultuous episode with the locals, Oxford academics departed and reorganized into a new university at Cambridge. Oxford and Cambridge would be the only two universities in England until the 1820s, thanks to another royal ban in the 1330s when academics again tried to depart Oxford and form a new university. Cambridge’s St. John College and Cavendish College (the building is now part of Homerton College) were added to & build, respectively, during the Gothic Revival Era.
Across the Atlantic, the Gothic Revival style spawned a specific genre called Collegiate Gothic, used in colleges and universities throughout America until the early 20th century to memorialize the old universities and the grand traditions of higher education. Recently, there has been a resurgence of the style again, from Princeton and Yale to USC in California.
Credits:
Christ Church College hallway & Magdalen College window — Michelle Dennis on FreeImages
Merton College chapel — Michael D Beckwith on Unsplash
Divinity Hall interior — David Iliff, CC-BY-SA 3.0
