The Radcliffe Camera (colloquially known as the "Rad Cam" or "The Camera"; from Latin camera, meaning 'chamber') is a building of the University of Oxford, England, designed by James Gibbs in a Baroque style and built in 1737–49 to house a library, ultimately becoming a reading room of the Bodleian Library, not open to the public, after the original library moved out.
It is sited to the south of the Old Bodleian, north of the Church of St Mary the Virgin, and between Brasenose College to the west and All Souls College to the east. The Radcliffe Camera's circularity, its position in the heart of Oxford, and its separation from other buildings make it the focal point of the University of Oxford, and as such it is almost always included in shorthand visual representations of the university.
The library's construction and maintenance was funded from the estate of John Radcliffe, a physician who left £40,000 upon his death in 1714; the library was not ready to open until 1749.
Until 1810, the library housed books covering a wide range of subjects, but under George Williams it was brought up to date from a state of neglect, and focus narrowed to the sciences, although by 1850 the Radcliffe Library still lagged behind the Bodleian. At this point librarian Henry Wentworth Acland arranged for the Radcliffe Library building to merge with the university, and the library's collection to be moved, ultimately to the newly constructed Radcliffe Science Library, a legal deposit member of the Bodleian Libraries; the building became known as the Radcliffe Camera, and used as a reading room for the Bodleian, to which it is connected by a tunnel, and an underground book store.
Contents
History
Background
John Radcliffe (c.1650–1714) attended University College from the age of thirteen, becoming a fellow of Lincoln College at eighteen. In a successful medical career, his patients included William III and Queen Anne. He built up a large fortune and died childless. He is buried in St. Mary's Church, Oxford.
It was known that he intended to build a library in Oxford at least two years before his death in 1714. It was thought that the new building would be an extension westwards of the Selden End of the Bodleian Library. Francis Atterbury, Dean of Christ Church, writing in December 1712 describes plans for a 90 ft room on the site of neighbouring Exeter College, and that the lower storey would be a library for Exeter College and the upper story Radcliffe's Library.
Radcliffe dedicated £100 a year to furnishing his proposed library with books. Plans were prepared by Nicholas Hawksmoor and are now held in the Ashmolean Museum. By 1714, however, Radcliffe had settled on a different site for his new library, to the south of the existing Bodleian. William Pittis, Radcliffe's first biographer, ascribes the change of heart to excessive demands from the Rector and Fellows of Exeter College.
Plans
Radcliffe died on 1 November 1714. His will, proved on 8 December, provided for the building of a new library on the new site, stating:
And will that my executors pay forty thousand pounds in the terme of ten years, by yearly payments of four thousand pounds, the first payment thereof to begin and be made after the decease of my said two sisters for the building a library in Oxford and the purchaseing the houses between St Maries and the scholes in Catstreet where I intend the Library to be built, and when the said Library is built I give one hundred and fifty pounds per annum for ever to the Library Keeper thereof for the time being and one hundred pounds a year per annum for ever for buying books for the same Library.
It also provided £100 a year to maintain the new library, but only once 30 years had elapsed from his death. The library-keeper was to be chosen by several influential figures: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Winchester, the Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary, the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench and the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and the Master of the Rolls. The first payment was to be made after the death of Radcliffe's two sisters, Hannah Redshaw and Millicent Radcliffe. The latter lived until 1736, although it appears between the death of Redshaw in 1716 and Millicent Radcliffe in 1736, much preparatory work was done acquiring the site for the library.
A number of tenement houses fronting Catte Street, built right up to the schools, some gardens, Brasenose College outbuildings and Black Hall occupied the site required for the library. A number of colleges became involved in the development of the site. An added problem was that Brasenose required an equal amount of land fronting High Street in return for the land they were being asked to give up. As a consequence, the trustees had to negotiate with the owners and the tenants of the houses. The Radcliffe Camera Act 1720 (7 Geo. 1. St. 1. c. 13), was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that enabled any corporations within the university to sell ground for building a library. The negotiations dealing with Catte Street took over twenty years, with the final payments being made to Oriel, Magdalen and University colleges in 1737 (N.S.).
Radcliffe had placed four men in charge of his estate: William Bromley, sometime Speaker of the House of Commons; Sir George Beaumont, a Lord of the Admiralty; Antony Keck, a banker; and Thomas Sclater Bacon, a lawyer. There appears to have been some difficulty in getting the required majority to agree to work beginning before 1736, with the four split between Bromley and Beaumont wanting to start and Bacon and Keck set against them. Accordingly, Bromley made plans for work to start not long after 1720, but they were never fulfilled. The early start was to be funded by the high share price of investments in the South Sea Company, which proved overly optimistic.
Construction
On 17 May 1737, the foundation stone was laid. Four days before, the Trustees had decided on an inscription for it to bear on a copper plate. The whereabouts of neither the stone nor the plate are known, although it is believed that the copper plate adorned a section of the wall that was removed to create the doorway in 1863. That inscription read:
Quod Felix Faustumque sit
Academiae Oxoniensi
Die XVI. Kalendarum Junii
Anno MDCCXXXVII
Carolo Comite de Arran
Cancellario
Staphano Niblett S.T.P.
Vice-Cancellario
Thoma Paget et Iohanne Land A.M.
Procuratoribus
Plaudenti undique
Togata Gente
Honorabilis Admodum Dnus Dnus Carolus Noel Somerset
Honorabilis Iohannes Verney
Gualterus Wagstaff Bagot Baronettus
Edwardus Harley
et Armigeri
Edwardus Smith
Radclivii Munificentissimi
Testamenti Curatores
P.P.
Jacobo Gibbs Architecto
History as an independent library
The library's collection grew only slowly. The first book to be placed in the library was identified by one contemporary account as Thomas Carte's A General History of England. The first donation was some 50,000 pamphlets from a Mr Bartholomew of University College, subsequently gifted to the Bodleian in 1794. The first major purchase was books to the value of £45 from a seller in Newport in 1751, although they were kept in private possession until 1755. In 1754, the library received a number of books from the estate of James Gibbs, mostly concerning architecture. A number of classical and history books by the bequest of Richard Frewin, Camden Professor of Ancient History, and law books of Charles Viner, the founder of the Vinerian Professorship of Common Law, were also added to the library. Early purchases also included the purchase of the manuscripts of James Fraser to the value of £500, and those of George Sale for £157 10s., both concerned with the Middle East – the first on the advice of Thomas Hunt, Laudian Professor of Arabic. The texts appear to have suffered from poor care after their acquisition. Three further collections were purchased before Wise's death in 1767. Even at this early stage, the Trustees appear to have collaborated with the Bodleian to avoid duplication. The Library quickly became known as 'the Physic Library'. Despite its name, its acquisitions were varied for the first sixty years, but from 1811 its intake was confined to works of a scientific nature. During the first half of the 19th century the collections included coins, marbles, candelabra, busts, plaster casts, and statues. These collections have since been moved to more specifically appropriate sites.
A muniment room was created in 1753 to house the collection documents relating to Radcliffe's will and the accumulated deeds of the land on which the library had been built. Despite regular inspections, in 1817, a number of deeds were found to have degraded completely. Although the Trustees did not believe that the particular documents lost were likely to cause many future problems, the remaining manuscripts were moved to the main Library to prevent further damage. In other respects, Wise's tenure was marked only by his poor (and worsening) health and poor relations with the university. University members expected to be admitted and the vice-chancellor made it clear to Wise that he believed the library part of the university and thus under his overall control. Wise did not agree, threatening at one point to padlock the library and refer any man who cut it to the courts. The vice-chancellor took this as an unprovoked insult and turned to consideration of the university statutes and the imposition, if they did not already exist, of such statutes as would compel the ageing Wise to attend to his duties from which he was now regularly absent. Five years before his actual death in 1767, a satirical death notice was placed in the London papers announcing the "greatly regretted" death of Wise "[his death] occasioned by a violent cold, contracted by too close attendance on the duties of his respective offices". In those last years, Wise was so ill that he could no longer attend the library. Upon his death, his collection of coins was presented to the library.
Later history as part of the university
Between 1909 and 1912, an underground book store of two floors was constructed beneath the north lawn of the library with a tunnel connecting it with the Bodleian, invisibly linking the two library buildings, something envisaged by Henry Acland in 1861. It was known as the "Radder" in 1930s slang but was later referred to as "the Radcliffe Link" or "the Link". This was refurbished as reading rooms, completed in 2011, and is now known as the "Gladstone Link", or colloquially as the "Glink".
After the library as such moved out, the Radcliffe Camera came into use as additional reading rooms of the Bodleian Library. The interior of the upper reading room houses a six-foot marble statue of John Radcliffe, carved by John Michael Rysbrack. The building now holds books from the English, history, and theology collections, mostly secondary sources on undergraduate and graduate reading lists. There is space for around 600,000 books in rooms beneath Radcliffe Square.
The Radcliffe Camera has been the site of several student-led protests. In November 2010, the building was occupied by students for over twenty-four hours, as part of wider national protest against proposed changes to university funding and substantial increases in the cost of tuition. In October 2023, the building was sprayed with orange paint in a protest by Just Stop Oil against Oxford University's links to fossil fuel companies such as Ineos. In May 2024, pro-Palestinian activists set up a tent encampment of the grounds of the Radcliffe Camera as part of the 2024 University of Oxford pro-Palestinian campus occupations demanding that Oxford University divest from Israel.
Architecture
The building is the earliest example in England of a circular library. It is built in three main stages externally and two stories internally, the upper one containing a gallery. The ground stage is heavily rusticated and has a series of eight pedimented projections alternating with niches. The central stage is divided into bays by coupled Corinthian columns supporting the continuous entablature. The pedimented windows stand above mezzanine openings, reflecting the interior arrangement. The top stage is a lanterned dome on an octagonal drum, with a balustraded parapet with vases.
The construction used local stone from Headington and Burford, which was then ashlar faced. The dome and cupola are covered with lead. Inside, the original walls and dome were distempered but this was later removed, revealing the decorations to be carved in stone. Only the decorative work of the dome is plaster.
Originally, the basement was an open arched arcade with a vaulted stone ceiling, with Radcliffe's coat of arms in the centre. The arcade arches were fitted with iron grilles: three of them were gates which were closed at night, and which gave access to the library by a grand staircase. In 1863, when the building had become a reading-room of the Bodleian, the arches were glazed, a new entrance was created on the north side in place of a circular window, with stone steps leading up to the entrance.
The area around the Library was originally partly paved, partly cobbled, and partly gravelled. In 1751 stone posts and obelisks surmounted by lamps were placed around the perimeter. All but the three at the entrance to Brasenose Lane were removed around 1827 when the lawns were laid and iron railings installed.
Reception
The 1744 work The Present State of the Universities by Thomas Salmon described the new Radcliffe library as "the most magnificent Structure in Oxford... I find a great many People of Opinion that he intended to perpetuate his Memory by it, and therefore give it the name of 'Radcliffe's Mausoleum'". This was echoed by The Gentleman and the Lady's Pocket Companion for Oxford (1747) which said that "the most magnificent structure in Oxford is the new public Library". In 1773, however, Edward Tatham was not so complimentary: "The writer... cannot help expressing his disapprobation of the situation of the Radclivian Library. Whatever merit this edifice reflects on the architect, and splendor on the University, it certainly destroys the regularity of the area, and intercepts the view of every building in it." He regarded the north side of Broad Street, south of the gardens of Trinity College, to have been a more suitable site and the chosen site left largely open "as we pronounce in general that the areas in a town should be free, open, and without obstruction".
Gibbs later said of the Trustees: "I never observed a trust discharged with greater unanimity, integrity and candor, during the whole time I had the honour of serving you, from the laying of the first stone of this fabric to its finishing." Contemporaries found great irony in the fact that the iconoclast Radcliffe, who scorned book-learning, should bequeath a substantial sum for the founding of the Radcliffe Library. Sir Samuel Garth quipped that the endowment was "about as logical as if a eunuch should found a seraglio".