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Posted: 29 Jun 2013

Taken: 28 Mar 2013

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Radcliffe •
Observatory •
Tower of the Winds •
old •
historic •
18th century •
stone •
building •
architecture •
tower •
meteorology •
science •
astronomy •
observation •
laboratory •
Oxford •
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British •
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March •
2013 •
James Wyatt •
Green Templeton •
college •
university •

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Radcliffe Observatory tower

Radcliffe Observatory tower
Green Templeton College, Oxford
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 Isisbridge
Isisbridge club
www.gtc.ox.ac.uk/about/history/radcliffe-observatory

The eighteenth-century Radcliffe Observatory dominates the three-acre College site. The building functioned as an observatory from 1773 until the previous owners (the Radcliffe Trustees) decided to sell it in 1934 and to erect a new observatory in Pretoria, South Africa, where the less polluted atmosphere would be suitable for the study of the southern hemisphere.

The purchaser of the Observatory was Lord Nuffield, who presented it to the hospital authorities and in 1936 established the Nuffield Institute for Medical Research there. In 1979 the Institute moved to new premises in the grounds of the John Radcliffe Hospital, thus freeing the Observatory site for its new owner, Green College.

The Observatory was built at the suggestion of Dr Thomas Hornsby, the Savilian Professor of Astronomy, after he had used a room in the nearby Radcliffe Infirmary to observe the transit of Venus across the sun's disc in 1769. The transit was a notable event which helped to produce greatly improved measurements for nautical navigation.

Beneath the Tower itself are rooms at each of three levels: the ground floor is now the College dining room, the first floor, originally the library, is now used as the Common Room, and on the top floor is the magnificent octagonal observing room.

Now bereft of its instruments, the room nevertheless still contains some of the original furniture as well as a spiral staircase which leads to an upper gallery. From this gallery the Observer had access to the roof where meteorological observations were carried out. Large windows lead from the observing room onto the balcony, making it possible to wheel observing instruments outdoors.

Bing 2006 aerial view of Radcliffe Observatory (1 of 5)
10 years ago. Edited 15 months ago.

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