Strings, Stages & Open Skies: Oxford's Music & Nature Trail
From Europe's oldest concert hall to the meadows where rock legends were born
Oxford · 9 stops · 5.6 km · ~1.8 h · Generated
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1. Holywell Music Room — The First Concert Hall in Europe
Holywell Music Room, Holywell Street, Oxford
Take a look at this unassuming building on Holywell Street. From the outside, it looks like a plain Georgian chapel... maybe even a bit boring. But this modest brick box changed the history of music. This is the Holywell Music Room... the Oldest purpose-built concert hall in all of Europe!
Built in seventeen forty-eight, it holds the distinction of being the first concert venue specifically designed for musical performances on the continent. Before this room existed, Oxford concerts took place in the all-male domains of college dining halls and noisy, crowded taverns. Imagine trying to hear a delicate violin solo over the clink of ale tankards and rowdy students! This new Music Room offered something radical... a setting where, as one historian put it, ladies could be introduced "with safety and decorum." For the first time, women could attend public concerts in Oxford.
Now, who dreamed up this place? It was probably the brainchild of William Hayes, Heather Professor of Music at Oxford from seventeen forty-one, and designed by Thomas Camplin, Vice-Principal of Saint Edmund Hall. A music professor and a clergyman... not exactly your typical rock-and-roll duo. The whole thing cost one thousand two hundred and sixty-three pounds and ten shillings... roughly two and a half million pounds in today's money. All funded by public subscription.
And here's a detail that's easy to miss. Look up at the chandeliers inside. Those great ormolu gilt chandeliers were originally hung in Westminster Hall for King George the Fourth's coronation banquet in eighteen twenty. They were presented by Warden Tournay of Wadham College and ended up here, lighting chamber concerts instead of royal feasts.
The music that filled this room helped shape British taste. The venue was important for popularizing the music of Haydn in eighteenth-century England. In the four years before seventeen ninety-one, Haydn's was the music most frequently included in programs here. When Haydn himself came to Oxford that year to receive an honorary doctorate, he later told a friend, "I felt very silly in my gown, and I had to drag it around the streets for three whole days."
But here's the strangest twist. After decades of glory, the hall fell on hard times. By eighteen thirty-six it was used for auctions, exhibitions, and even shows given by a performing horse... and a vixen. A trained fox... in Europe's first concert hall.
It took over a century to fully reclaim its musical soul. In nineteen fifty-nine and sixty, the Music Room was restored and re-established as a sought-after space for musical performances. Today it seats just two hundred people... intimate, warm, with acoustics that musicians Love. When the room first opened in the seventeen fifties, one observer marveled that there was "not one pillar to deaden the sound." That purity of sound is still here, nearly three centuries later. If you ever get the chance to catch a concert inside... take it. You'll be hearing music exactly the way it was meant to be heard.
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2. Sheldonian Theatre — Where Handel Once Performed
Sheldonian Theatre, Broad Street, Oxford
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3. Wadham College Gardens — Where Music Students Once Picnicked
Wadham College, Parks Road, Oxford
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4. Jericho Tavern — Where Radiohead Were Born
Jericho Tavern, 56 Walton Street, Oxford
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5. The Old Bookbinders Ale House — Jericho's Hidden Session Pub
Old Bookbinders Ale House, 17-18 Victor Street, Oxford
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6. St Barnabas Church, Jericho — Victorian Music Hall in Disguise
St Barnabas Church, Cardigan Street, Oxford
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7. Oxford Botanic Garden — Oldest in Britain, Perfect for a Campsite Reverie
Oxford Botanic Garden, Rose Lane, Oxford
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8. O2 Academy Oxford — Where Radiohead Filmed 'Creep'
O2 Academy Oxford, 190 Cowley Road, Oxford
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9. The Bullingdon — Oxford's Underground Gig Cave
The Bullingdon, 162 Cowley Road, Oxford
