Multinational banks, electronics shops, Starbucks, department stores, pharmacies, mobile phone outlets--all that is modern about our world is set into buildings and structures that are older than my home country. Young folks jet through the town talking on their mobiles, headphones stuck firmly in their ears as old, quintessential English couples stroll, hand in hand down the street. Buses and taxis and the latest model of car stream through the city over ancient bridges and cobblestone streets, rushing past history. Glass facades of clean, modern structures stand next to weathered stone buildings with gargoyles and stained glass windows.
It is a city both modern and ancient. What's more the paradox works. Somehow the old and the new fit quite beautifully together. Now, doubtless, I'm sure there are people who live here would would vehemently disagree with me, who think the history of the city is being desecrated or something, but I have yet to meet them. As a visitor to this wonderful and magic city, I love the paradox of it.
For example: in one of the main thoroughfares through town, Cornmarket Street, there is a Virgin Mobile shop. Across from that shop is St. Michael's Tower. This tower was build almost 1,000 years ago. Let me say this again: 1,000 years old. Guys. This tower was build in 1040. That's twenty-six years before the Norman Invasion, 244 years before Oxford University got a charter, 452 years before Christopher Columbus got to America, 524 years before William Shakespeare was born, 743 years before the United States of America became a country, 899 years before World War II started, and 975 years before this year.
Let that sink in.
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| St. Michael's |
A Virgin Mobile shop, founded in 1999 (sixteen years ago), is currently sitting across from a tower that is 975 years old and no one bats an eye. It is completely normal here. And it's like that everywhere. That's not to say there are mobile shops on every corner nor that they entire city is pushing 1,000 years of age, but that the ancient and the modern coexist here without any fuss or fanfare. It is completely normal for me to be walking past Jesus College where T.E. Lawrence lived and studied, or past the Martyrs Cross where the likes of Thomas Cranmer were executed, or sit in a room in the Bodleian Library where Charles I held court during the English Civil War, or see the spot in Christ Church Cathedral where John Wesley was ordained, or eat and drink where J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis ate and drank and discussed their books, or--or--or--
It's spectacular.
As I walk down each street I am spellbound by the city. Stone towers carved with flowers, mythic beasts, faces of men can be found on each street. Ornate spires abound in the city, reaching high for the looming, grey clouds above. Quaint multistory buildings like something out of a film line each street, some as shops, some as cafes, others as homes, all delightful. And all of this with people in jeans and coats, with phones and cameras, some driving past in Mercedes or Renaults blasting music or trying to get to work on time--a blending of a world frozen in time and of one racing through it. What should be at odds blends into a wonderful, rhythmic harmony of an everyday life.
And then there are the extra-spectacular sites like the Radcliffe Camera.
The Radcliffe Camera is perhaps one of the most iconic structures in Oxford. I've been lucky to catch it at sunset where the stones capture the last of the sun's warm glow and take on a golden hue against the almost perpetually stormy sky. It is one of few places in this city that somehow manages to be more beautiful than the rest of it.
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| Radcliffe Camera and All Souls College |
The city of Oxford is filled with a magic that cannot be conveyed, only experienced and lived. I count myself blessed to be able to do that.
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All the photos are mine and are not to be used without my expressed permission. Sammy Rey, 2015
Beautifully captured, in words and images.
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