A History of Pembroke College, Oxford, Anciently Broadgates Hall (Electronic book text)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER IV. HALLS ON THE SITE OF THE PRESENT COLLEGE. No College stands within more natural boundaries than Pembroke College. Yet it is an almost accidental agglomeration of ancient tenements in two parishes, belonging formerly to a number of different owners. By the purchase in 1888 of the Wolsey Hospital the process of gradual expansion became complete. Except a minute strip of land1 outside its western wall the College covers the whole quasi- rectangular area formed by the city wall on the south, St. Ebbe's Street on the west, Beef Lane and St. Aldate's churchyard on the north, and St. Aldate's Street on the east. The extreme length is 540 feet; the extreme breadth 130. The academic tenements which once covered this area were as follows, beginning from the east:'Segrim's Houses' (the Wolsey Almshouse), New College Chambers, Abingdon Chambers, Broad- gates Hall, Cambey's Lodgings, Minote or St. John's Hall, the double Hall of SS. Michael and James, Beef Hall, Wyld's Entry, and Dunstan Hall. For all of these lands, except the Almshouse (which belonged to Christ Church) and Cambey's, the College paid rent till recent times. I have already spoken of ' Segrim's Houses,' and will hereafter treat of the Almshouse upon this site. It was divided by a wedge- shaped strip of ground (averaging 17 feet broad, belonging also to the Priory, and forming part of the butt-yard) from the neighbouring New College land. Until 1866 the College leased this strip of Christ Church for a shilling yearly, collected by one of the almsmen and kept by them. In the accounts in the time of the Commonwealth, ' 1textit{2d. for y* Almesmen in christ church Hospitall,' ' for a little ground.' In Agas's map there is something which may answer to the present double gates opening on to this slice of ground, but Dr. Ingram and 1 ...