Keble College, Oxford

college of the University of Oxford

Keble College is one of the colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its main buildings are on Parks Road, opposite the University Museum and the University Parks. Keble is one of the larger colleges, with 435 undergraduates and 245 graduate students. The head of the college is the Warden (currently Sir Michael Jacobs) and senior academic members are Fellows.

The college chapel

Keble was founded in 1870, having been built as a monument to John Keble, a leading member of the Oxford Movement. As originally constituted it was for men only and the fellows were mostly bachelors resident in the college. In the period after the second World War the trends were towards scientific courses (the major area devoted to science east of the University Museum influenced this) and eventually co-education for men and women from 1979 onwards.

It remains distinctive for its once-controversial[1] neo-gothic red-brick buildings designed by William Butterfield. During the 20th century the college has been extended several times by new buildings.

References

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  1. In 1875, a writer in The Guardian dismissed Butterfield's Chapel as "fantastically picked out with zig-zag or checkerboard ornamentation", to which Butterfield responded stoutly in print, citing his East Anglian and Cotswold precedents: Paul Thompson, William Butterfield, 1971, noted in a review by J. Mordaunt Crook in The English Historical Review 1974.