Worcester College Gardens
Twenty-six acres of gardens, playing fields and a lake inside the city — the largest college grounds in central Oxford, kept that way by the college's 18th-century edge-of-town location.
Worcester is one of the few central colleges to keep a lake; the gardens win the Oxford in Bloom college award every time the college enters.
The gardens of Worcester College — twenty-six acres of lawn, lake, mature trees, herbaceous borders and contiguous playing fields — are the largest college grounds in central Oxford. The unusual scale is a survival from the eighteenth century, when the college sat on the edge of the city: as the city grew up around it the gardens did not have to give way, and the layout that resulted is closer to a country house park than to the cramped quadrangle gardens of the older central colleges.
A Picturesque garden
Extensive work on the gardens was done between 1817 and 1820, and the layout that survives may have been set out in the Picturesque style by Richard Greswell in 1827. The "may" is the source's hedge — the attribution is not certain — but the principle of the layout is unmistakable: enclosed lawns and walks open onto wider views over the lake and the playing fields beyond, with planting designed to look natural rather than formal.
The gardens have won numerous awards, and have taken the Oxford in Bloom college award every time they have been entered for the competition. They are looked after by head gardener Simon Bagnall and a team of seven gardeners; from February 2009 to December 2018 the team kept a blog about the year-round work of running the grounds.
The lake
The lake is the most photographed feature: an oblong of open water with mature trees around the edges, set into the playing fields. It has also been used for theatre. Nevill Coghill — better known to many as J.R.R. Tolkien's friend and the editor of The Canterbury Tales — directed The Tempest on the lake in 1949. Patrick Garland later directed Twelfth Night in the gardens with Oz Clarke as Sir Toby Belch and Francis Matthews; and in 2016 Twelfth Night came back, this time in the Provost's garden, directed by provost Jonathan Bate and undergraduate Georgia Figgis.
Visiting
Public access is at the college's discretion: the college admits visitors during published opening hours through the porters' lodge on Walton Street. Hours change in term and around college events, so check the Worcester website before visiting. The gardens pair well with Addison's Walk and Mesopotamia for a longer day on the gentler corners of the central university.
Nearby
Within a few minutes' walk
