Introduction to the archives of University College
University College owes its origins to a bequest in 1249 made by William of Durham, Rector of Bishopwearmouth, and was given its first statutes in 1280/1. It appears to have been situated originally on the site of Brasenose College, but moved to its present site on High Street some time after 1332.
None of the original medieval buildings of University College survive; they were replaced by the current Main Quadrangle, which was built between 1634 and 1676. The College has been expanding in either direction along the High Street, and southwards to Merton Street, ever since.
For a short introduction to the history of the College, see:
https://www.univ.ox.ac.uk/about/history/
A fuller guide to the history of University College is given in:
Robin Darwall-Smith, A History of University College, Oxford (Oxford University Press, 2008).
The archives of University College were first catalogued in the early eighteenth century by William Smith (F. 1675–1705). His work is described in more detail in a separate Research Guide on this website. At this time, the College’s archives were stored in a muniment room at the top of the tower at the entrance to the Main Quadrangle.
After Smith’s activities, no actual cataloguing took place in the archives for almost three centuries. In the summers of 1887 and 1888 Charles Faulkner (F. 1856–92) undertook a stocktaking of the archives, and the notes made on that occasion provide useful information for which items were already missing then (see UC:AR3).
Although no fresh cataloguing was done after Smith’s day, the muniment room continued to receive fresh accruals, even if they remained uncatalogued. Some initial sorting of these later documents, however, did take place, mostly by David Cox (F. 1938–80). In the 1950s, the archives were moved out of the muniment room into bookstacks on the ground floor College Library. In 1973, the archives were moved into a cellar under the New Building (UCR Vol. VI no. 3 (1973) p. 219), and in 1995 were then transferred to the cellars under the Master’s Lodgings, where the Science Library had been. In 2012, the archives were moved to purpose-built storage situated under the Goodhart Seminar Room. Smith’s original boxes have long been lost: the cupboards which remain in the former muniment room appear to date from the nineteenth century (they might have been built as part of Faulkner’s stocktaking exercise).
Since July 1993 an ongoing process has been in place to catalogue all the archives of University College. It was decided to assign new references to all documents, even those which had been numbered by Smith (a concordance table of old and new references is available from the archivist). Under this new cataloguing scheme, the archives have been divided up into overall groups as listed here:
GB Records of the Governing Body of University College.
V Records on the Visitor of University College
BE Records of Benefactions to University College.
MA Records of Masters of University College.
S Records of Senior Members of University College.
J Records of Junior Members of University College.
BU Records of the College Bursar.
EB Records of the College Estate Bursar.
DB Records of the College Domestic Bursar.
FA Records concerning the buildings of University College.
C Records of the College Chaplain.
L Records of the College Library.
CO Records of the College Office.
CA Records of the Campaign Office.
AR Records of the College Archives
E Records of College Estates.
O Records of College Organisations and Societies.
P Privately-deposited Records.
Some of the older documents in the collection have been published in these volumes:
A, D. M. Cox and R. H. Darwall-Smith (eds.), Account Rolls of University College, Oxford, 1381/2-1470/1 and 1471/2-1596/7 (Oxford Historical Society, new series volumes xxxix and xl [1999 & 2001]).
Robin Darwall-Smith (ed.), Early Rolls of University College Oxford (Oxford Historical Society, new series volume xlvi [2015])
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Several items in the archives which relate to people who are still alive are closed to researchers. These items will therefore not appear in this online catalogue.