3-011-494 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Views of Merton College, Oxford: the undergraduates' quadrangle, 1864. '...the college has lately erected a block of buildings of sixteen sets of rooms for undergraduates. These have been designed, by Mr. Butterfield, in a modification of fourteenth-century Gothic, and are an improvement in the arrangement of the ground plan upon the general system of the older college rooms...An important improvement is effected by these buildings forming a new quadrangle in connection with the south side of the old library, which is now well thrown open. Hitherto it looked upon ground appropriated to very unpicturesque and mean outbuildings. These have been cleared away, and the library building is now conveniently accessible on all sides. The new buildings also form a very striking object from the Meadows to the south-east, where they are seen in connection with the principal front of the college, and extend its frontage line on this side in a very effective manner. They are built of Bath stone, and form a block about 90 ft. by 35 ft.; and are about equal in height to the buildings in the Fellows' Quadrangle, with which they range'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.