page_title: Oxford Union
section_title: Union buildings
hierarchical_section_title: Oxford Union / Union buildings
caption_attribution_description: English: A view from the gallery of the Old Library in the evening.
context_page_description: The Oxford Union Society, commonly referred to simply as the Oxford Union, is a debating society in the city of Oxford, England, whose membership is drawn primarily from the University of Oxford. Founded in 1823, it is one of Britain's oldest university unions and one of the world's most prestigious private students' societies. The Oxford Union exists independently from the university and is separate from the Oxford University Student Union.
  The Oxford Union has a tradition of hosting some of the world's most prominent individuals across politics, academia and popular culture, including US Presidents Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, British Prime Ministers Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron and Theresa May, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, activists Malcolm X, Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa, actor Morgan Freeman, musicians Sir Elton John and Michael Jackson and sportspeople Diego Maradona and Manny Pacquiao.
context_section_description: The Oxford Union buildings are located in Frewin Court, off Cornmarket Street, and on St Michael's Street. The original union buildings were designed by Benjamin Woodward and opened in 1857. The society soon outgrew these premises and commissioned Alfred Waterhouse to design a free-standing debating chamber in the gardens, opened in 1879. This was about a decade after the completion of the Cambridge Union's premises, also designed by Waterhouse, and the exterior of the two buildings is very similar.
  The original Woodward debating chamber is now known as "The Old Library". The Old Library is best known for its Pre-Raphaelite paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, referred to as the Oxford Union murals. The current debating chamber and several further extensions to the main buildings were added over the next forty years. The final extension was designed in a conventional Gothic Revival style by Walter Mills and Thorpe and built in 1910-11. It provides the MacMillan Room (the Union dining room) as well as the Goodman Library, underneath which there are basement library stacks. The Union also consists of a Bar on the ground floor, the Morris Room (a meeting room) and Snooker Room on the first floor, and a Members' TV Room on the third (uppermost) floor, along with separate offices for the President, Librarian, Treasurer and Secretary.
  Many of the rooms in the union are named after figures from the union's past, such as the Goodman Library, with its oriel windows, and the wood-panelled Macmillan Room with barrel ceiling. The buildings have gradually been added to with paintings and statues of past presidents and prominent members.
  The Old Library contains a fireplace situated in the middle of the floor, with a concealed flue, a rare design of which only a handful of examples survive in the UK.
  In the debating chamber there are busts of such notables as Roy Jenkins, Edward Heath, Michael Heseltine, George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston and William Ewart Gladstone. There is also a grand piano in the debating chamber known as the "Bartlet-Jones Piano" after the Oxford University Music Society president who found it dusty and forgotten in a cupboard in the Holywell Music Room and placed it on permanent loan to the Union. The piano was unveiled by Vladimir Ashkenazy, who famously refused to play it in front of the packed chamber because he "had not warmed up". The despatch boxes which continue to be used in union debates are modelled on those in the House of Commons and were offered to the House during World War II.
  As recently as the 1970s the Oxford Union still provided a full silver service dining room for its members, which like its famous bar was the afternoon and evening venue of choice for many of the university's leading undergraduate journalists and politicos. To be invited to dine at the large table in the bay window, the usual domain of the Union's president, was considered the acme of attainment in that particular sphere of the university. It was often said more plots were hatched around that particular table on a regular evening than in the Houses of Parliament on Bonfire Night. Similarly the Union's two libraries were extensively used by that same cadre of undergraduates, mainly studying humanities, who were rushing at the last minute to complete the obligatory weekly essay for their formal university education. The Union's buildings were used as a location for the films Oxford Blues (1984) and The Madness of King George (1994).
caption: The Old Library at night as viewed from the gallery.
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