page_title: Balliol College, Oxford
section_title: Front quadrangle
hierarchical_section_title: Balliol College, Oxford / Buildings and grounds / Front quadrangle
caption_attribution_description: English: The chapel of Balliol College, Oxford, England.
context_page_description: Balliol College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a rich landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the foundation and endowment for the college. When de Balliol died in 1269 his widow, Dervorguilla, a woman whose wealth far exceeded that of her husband, continued his work in setting up the college, providing a further endowment, and writing the statutes. She is considered a co‑founder of the college.
  The college's alumni include the incumbent Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, as well as three former prime ministers, Harald V of Norway, Empress Masako of Japan, five Nobel laureates, and numerous literary and philosophical figures, including Shoghi Effendi, Adam Smith, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Aldous Huxley. John Wycliffe, who translated the Bible into English, was Master of the college in the 1360s.
context_section_description: The oldest parts of the college are the north and west ranges of the front quadrangle, dated to 1431, respectively the medieval hall, west side, now the "new library" and the "old library" first floor north side. The ground floor is the Old Senior Common Room. Balliol's second library pre-dates the publication of printed books in Europe. There is a possibility that the original Master's Chamber, south west side, adorned with a fine oriel window, is earlier than these; it is now the Master's Dining Room.
  William Grey, Bishop of Ely, was a benefactor of the college in the 15th century. Grey devoted much care to the collection of manuscripts, and wherever he resided constantly employed scribes to make copies of such books as he could not otherwise obtain. Many of these he had adorned with costly miniatures and initial letters by the skill of an artist who worked for him at Florence. It was his desire to make his collection the nucleus of a library for Balliol College, to the building of which, as well as to that of the master's lodgings and of the old buttery and hall, he contributed largely. The work was finished about 1477 by Robert Abdy, then master of the college, and enriched with some two hundred manuscripts, the bishop's gift. Of these, many were destroyed in the reign of Edward VI and during the great rebellion, and by Wood's time few of the miniatures in the remaining volumes had escaped mutilation. But by 1890, no less than 152 of Grey's codices were still in the possession of the college, and form a large part of Roger Mynors's 1963 catalogue of the college's manuscripts.  The bishop's coat of arms (gules, a lion rampant, within a bordure engrailed argent) is displayed on two windows of the Old Library, and in the panels below the window of the Master's dining room.
  The Chapel is the third (perhaps fourth) on the site and was designed by William Butterfield in 1857.
  Alfred Waterhouse designed the main Broad Street frontage of the college (1867–68), along with gateway and tower, known as the Brackenbury Buildings after philanthropist and donor Hannah Brackenbury, replacing earlier structures (Staircases I–VII). The first staircase next to the Chapel contains the Organ Scholar's lodgings.
caption: The interior of the chapel
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "5375", "Image ImageLength": "3831", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2014:12:03 14:37:08", "Image Artist": "David Iliff", "Image Copyright": "David Iliff", "Image ExifOffset": "280", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "578", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7862", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "640", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:01:10 16:00:08", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:01:10 16:00:08", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF FocalLength": "2147483647/218470970", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "5368", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3832", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "10"}