page_title: Christ Church, Oxford
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Christ Church, Oxford / History
context_page_description: Christ Church is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Christ Church is a joint foundation of the college and the cathedral of the Oxford diocese, which serves as the college chapel and whose dean is ex officio the college head.
  Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, it is one of the larger colleges of the University of Oxford with 629 students in 2016. It is also the wealthiest college with an endowment of £577.6m as of 2019. Christ Church has a number of architecturally significant buildings including Tom Tower, Tom Quad, and the Great Dining Hall which was also the seat of the parliament assembled by King Charles I during the English Civil War. The buildings have inspired replicas throughout the world in addition to being featured in films such as Harry Potter and The Golden Compass. This has helped Christ Church become the most popular Oxford college for tourists with almost half a million visitors annually.
  Christ Church has many notable alumni including thirteen British prime ministers, King Edward VII, King William II of the Netherlands, seventeen Archbishops, writers Lewis Carroll and W. H. Auden, philosopher John Locke, and scientist Robert Hooke.
context_section_description: In 1525, at the height of his power, Thomas Wolsey, Lord Chancellor of England and Cardinal Archbishop of York, suppressed the Priory of St Frideswide in Oxford and founded Cardinal College on its lands, using funds from the dissolution of Wallingford Priory and other minor priories. He planned the establishment on a magnificent scale, but fell from grace in 1529, with the buildings only three-quarters complete, as they were to remain for 140 years.
  In 1531 the college was itself suppressed, but it was refounded in 1532 as King Henry VIII's College by Henry VIII, to whom Wolsey's property had escheated. Then in 1546 the King, who had broken from the Church of Rome and acquired great wealth through the dissolution of the monasteries in England, refounded the college as Christ Church as part of the reorganisation of the Church of England, making the partially demolished priory church the cathedral of the recently created Diocese of Oxford.
  Christ Church's sister college in the University of Cambridge is Trinity College, Cambridge, founded the same year by Henry VIII.  Since the time of Queen Elizabeth I the college has also been associated with Westminster School. The dean remains to this day an ex officio member of the school's governing body.
  Major additions have been made to the buildings through the centuries, and Wolsey's Great Quadrangle was crowned with the famous gate-tower designed by Sir Christopher Wren. To this day the bell in the tower, Great Tom, is rung 101 times at 9 pm at the former Oxford time (9:05 pm GMT/BST) every night, for the 100 original scholars of the college (plus one added in 1664). In former times this was done at midnight, signalling the close of all college gates throughout Oxford. Since it took 20 minutes to ring the 101, Christ Church gates, unlike those of other colleges, did not close until 12:20. When the ringing was moved back to 9:00 pm, Christ Church gates still remained open until 12.20, 20 minutes later than any other college. Although the clock itself now shows GMT/BST, Christ Church still follows Oxford time in the timings of services in the cathedral.
  King Charles I made the Deanery his palace and held his Parliament in the Great Hall during the English Civil War. In the evening of 29 May 1645, during the second siege of Oxford, a "bullet of IX lb. weight" shot from the Parliamentarians warning-piece at Marston fell against the wall of the north side of the Hall.
  Several of Christ Church's deans achieved high academic distinction, notably Owen under the Commonwealth, Aldrich and Fell in the Restoration period, Jackson and Gaisford in the early 19th century and Liddell in the high Victorian era.
  For over four centuries Christ Church admitted men only; the first female students at Christ Church matriculated in 1980.
caption: Christ Church's library in the early 19th century
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