Radcliffe Camera

About 1 pages (368 words)


Above: Radcliffe Camera from ground level in Radcliffe Square Below left: Radcliffe Camera, viewed from the University Church Below right: Make Poverty History campaigners form a human ring around Radcliffe Camera, 2005-06-08.

Location of the Radcliffe Camera within central Oxford

The Radcliffe Camera (colloquially, 'Rad Cam' or 'Radders') is a building in Oxford, England, designed by James Gibbs in the English Palladian style and built in 1737–1749 to house the Radcliffe Science Library. The building was funded by a £40,000 bequest from John Radcliffe, who died in 1714. Nicholas Hawksmoor proposed making the building round. After the Radcliffe Science Library moved into another building, the Radcliffe Camera became home to additional reading rooms of the Bodleian Library. It now holds books from the English, History and Theology collections, mostly secondary sources found on undergraduate reading lists. There is space for around 600,000 books in rooms beneath Radcliffe Square. The term "camera" translates from Latin as "room" or "chamber."

References in popular culture

J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of The Rings, remarked that the building resembled Sauron's temple to Morgoth on Númenor.^[1] It also features in The Notion Club Papers.
Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian includes a very intense scene set in the interior of the Radcliffe Camera.
Used as a location in the films Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), Opium Wars (Yapian zhanzheng) (1997), The Saint (1997) and The Red Violin (1998).^[2]

^ Simon Rose, December 9, 2001 tourist trail article Fellowship of the Ring/J.R.R. Tolkien Trail 24 hour museum.
^ Leonard, Bill, The Oxford of Inspector Morse Location Guides, Oxford (2004) p.202 ISBN 0-9547671-1-X.