Lady Margaret Hall, Old Hall

Lady Margaret Hall: Old Hall

A women's hall of residence comprising a Victorian villa and later extension, located on the Norham Manor Estate in Oxford.

The original house was built around 1879 in gault brick with stone dressings by Pike and Messenger or Willson Beasley for St Johns College. It was extended in 1881–3 in red brick by Basil Chawneys for Lady Margaret Hall.

The original portion (to the west) is a substantial Victorian villa in Gothic style. It has two storeys with basement and attic, arranged in three bays with gabled ends and a gabled dormer at the centre. The windows are wooden sashes set in moulded cambered arch openings. A stone gabled Gothic portal with short columns carrying carved capitals marks the centre doorway. The brick is dressed with moulded stringcourses. The rear elevation is similar but features a canted bay on the left and lacks the portal. The roof is slated with gables.

The 1881–3 extension (to the east) is in Queen Anne or Dutch style, executed in red brick with moulded brick dressings and a tiled roof with shaped gable ends. It has two storeys and attic over a plan of double pile, with chambers at front and back off axial corridors. The exterior presents four symmetrical bays divided on the first floor and attic by brick pilasters on small consoles, with moulded brick stringcourses that break forward at the pilasters and at the attic window aprons. The first floor windows have shaped brick aprons; the upper floor windows have moulded brick cornices. The attic has small Dutch gables. Parapets between the pilasters rise above them. The ground floor is plain. All windows contain pairs of tall twelve-pane sashes in moulded cases. A small three-storey link block of three windows, partly roughcast, connects the elements at the right end. The rear elevation is similar but without pilasters, parapets, or the Dutch gables, having instead hipped dormers. Brick chimney stacks rise throughout.

Internally, the original house contains an open-well staircase with moulded wooden balustrade. The 1881–3 extension retains its original arrangement virtually unaltered, with a dog-leg staircase featuring moulded balusters and handrail ramped up to clustered baluster newels. The corridors have round arches with ceiling cornices. The chambers have panelled doors with overlights and retain their original small Baroque chimneypieces.

Lady Margaret Hall was founded in 1878 as Oxford's first women's college, initially to prepare women for university examinations. It did not achieve full college status until 1960. This building was one of the Norham Garden villas, which the College extended in 1881–3. The Hall underwent further substantial additions in 1896, 1909–10 (by Sir Reginald Blomfield), 1915, 1926 (by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1931), and 1957–61 (the Wolfson Quad by Raymond Erith).