Christ Church Great Hall & Bodley Staircase: The Hogwarts Portal

Why is it significant?

Gaze up at the magnificent sixteenth-century fan-vaulted ceiling curving above the Bodley Staircase at Christ Church. Supported by a single slender stone pillar carved in sixteen forty, this stone flight is one of the most recognizable filming locations in cinematic history.

Key Facts

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Gaze up at the magnificent sixteenth-century fan-vaulted ceiling curving above the Bodley Staircase at Christ Church. Supported by a single slender stone pillar carved in sixteen forty, this stone flight is one of the most recognizable filming locations in cinematic history. It was right here, on these broad stone steps, that Professor McGonagall first greeted the first-year wizards in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. What lies through those heavy oak doors at the top of the stairs? Step inside the Great Hall, founded by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in fifteen twenty-five and finished by King Henry the Eighth. Look at the three long wooden dining tables and the hammerbeam timber roof: filmmakers used this room as the exact blueprint to build the Great Hall of Hogwarts at Warner Bros Studios in Leavesden. Look closely at the stained glass window on your right: look for the tiny portrait of a little girl in a yellow dress. That is Alice Liddell, daughter of the college dean Henry Liddell. In the eighteen sixties, an eccentric mathematics don named Charles Dodgson, better known to the world as Lewis Carroll, sat at these very high tables and dreamed up Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to entertain Alice and her sisters. Thirteen British Prime Ministers and philosopher John Locke dined under these oil portraits. As students in black academic gowns still take their daily meals here beneath the chandeliers, the boundary between Oxford tradition and childhood magic dissolves.