Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Oxford

SUMMER PROGRAMME

Field Trips

Gloucester and Berkeley Castle

Gloucester: The great cathedral of Gloucester became nationally important after the murder of King Edward II in nearby Berkeley Castle and his burial in the then Abbey Church. Royal master-masons from Westminster were responsible for transforming the Norman church, introducing the soaring, delicate Perpendicular style of the fourteenth century: great windows, tall choir, and the new fan vaulting in the cloisters.

Berkeley Castle: This is one of the finest and most famous castles in England, and the home of the Berkeley family for over eight centuries. Much remains of the medieval fortress of pink and grey stone, including the Great Hall, the Keep, and the Dungeon where the hapless King Edward II suffered an agonizing death in 1327.

Lauren Bianco 2006

Warwick Castle and Town

The castle incorporates a 14th-century fortress developed by the Earls of Warwick into an imposing residential stronghold, allying the military might of the towers and walls with the domestic comforts of the Great Hall and private apartments. The modern visitor has access to the ramparts and towers, the gatehouse barracks, the armoury, the dungeons and the park. The town is an intriguing amalgam of 16th-century half-timbered houses and 17th-century classical buildings, with a church showing both Medieval and Renaissance features. The West Gate and Tudor Almshouses escaped the 1694 fire which destroyed much of the town and thus enabled a programme of fashionable rebuilding.

Laura Brunsvold 2005

Glastonbury Abbey and Wells Cathedral, Somerset

In an area steeped in the legends and mysteries of King Arthur, Glastonbury Abbey even today in its ruins is a dramatic relic of the greatest abbey of the English Benedictines. The town grew in the beneficent shadow of the Abbey and still has two of its oldest buildings: The George and Pilgrim and The Tribunal.

Six miles away lies Wells, the smallest cathedral city in England. The building of the cathedral began about 1175 and continued over the following two centuries: the ‘Angel Steps’ and fan-vaulted Chapter House are exceptionally fine. Nearby, the moated Bishop’s Palace is set in broad waters fed by the many wells which gave the town its name.