Qualla: Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College, Oxford: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY 2.5. Every May 1, at 6 a.m., the Magdalen College Choir climbs the inside of a 144-foot bell tower and sings Hymnus Eucharisticus to the crowds below on Magdalen Bridge. The tradition is at least 500 years old. People come from across England to stand on the bridge in the cold gray dawn and listen to choristers no one can see. The bells ring after. The Dean of Divinity blesses the city and the university. The crowd, after centuries of practice, then turns and goes to breakfast - sometimes with morris dancing in the streets. It is the loveliest piece of unbroken pageantry in English academic life, and it happens at the same place every year.

Read more: Magdalen College, Oxford on Qualla

Image: CC BY 2.5

Magdalen College, Oxford: A Bishop, a Knight, and a Hospital

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Decan, CC BY-SA 3.0. William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor of England, founded Magdalen in 1458. The money came in part from Sir John Fastolf, a knight who fought at Agincourt and Verneuil and who left a fortune intended to fund a religious college. Waynflete acquired the sit...

Read more: Magdalen College, Oxford on Qualla

Image: Decan | CC BY-SA 3.0

Magdalen College, Oxford: The Tower

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jps3, CC BY-SA 4.0. Magdalen Tower took ten years to build, from 1492 to 1509, and is 144 feet tall. It dominates the eastern approach to central Oxford. The tower is the spiritual center of the May Morning ceremony, the largest single annual gathering in the city, and a building so admired that it ...

Read more: Magdalen College, Oxford on Qualla

Image: Jps3 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Magdalen College, Oxford: Cromwell, Cardinal Wolsey, and the King's Plate

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Godot13, CC BY-SA 4.0. Magdalen was Royalist during the Civil War. In 1642 the college donated more than 296 pounds of silver and gold plate - the largest contribution by weight of any Oxford college - to fund the King's war. From 1643 to 1645, the Grove was full of Royalist ordnance, with forges and f...

Read more: Magdalen College, Oxford on Qualla

Image: Godot13 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Magdalen College, Oxford: Snake's Head Fritillaries and a Walk Named Addison

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JCrue, CC BY-SA 4.0. Behind the college runs Addison's Walk, a circular path named for Joseph Addison, the 17th-century essayist and Magdalen fellow whose journal The Spectator helped invent modern English prose. The walk loops through Addison's Meadow, which floods most winters. Because of the flood...

Read more: Magdalen College, Oxford on Qualla

Image: JCrue | CC BY-SA 4.0

Magdalen College, Oxford: Nobel Laureates and the Daubeny Lab

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit -wuppertaler, CC BY-SA 4.0. Magdalen has produced or housed an extraordinary number of Nobel laureates. Howard Florey, who developed penicillin into a usable drug, was a Rhodes Scholar at Magdalen and shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Peter Medawar, supervised by Florey, shared the 1960...

Read more: Magdalen College, Oxford on Qualla

Image: -wuppertaler | CC BY-SA 4.0