Walking south down Oxford’s Mansfield Road, it is hard not to be stopped in one’s tracks by the porter’s lodge of the Gradel Quadrangles, built for New College [1]. Opened only in April this year, and still awaiting their finishing touches, they are the newest addition to a city that contains arguably the country’s grandest suite of urban buildings but also its most curious.
Seen as it is approached, obliquely, the bulging arch of the low-winged porters’ lodge contrasts vividly with the strict, Perpendicular lines of Thomas Worthington’s (rather uninspiring) chapel at Harris Manchester that stands behind it . Looked .
