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Tom Tower

"Great Tom (bell)" redirects here. For the bell at St Paul's Cathedral in London, see St Paul's Cathedral § Clock and bells.

Tom Tower seen from Tom Quad
Print of 1675, before Wren's additions, David Loggan, Oxonia Illustrata
Tom Tower seen from St Aldates

Tom Tower is a bell tower in Oxford, England, named after its bell, Great Tom. It is over Tom Gate, on St Aldates, the main entrance of Christ Church, Oxford, which leads into Tom Quad. This square tower with an octagonal lantern and facetted ogee dome was designed by Christopher Wren and built 1681–82. The strength of Oxford architectural tradition and Christ Church's connection to its founder, Henry VIII, motivated the decision to complete the gatehouse structure, left unfinished by Cardinal Wolsey at the date of his fall from power in 1529, and which had remained roofless since. Wren made a case for working in a Late Gothic style—that it "ought to be Gothick to agree with the Founders worke"[1]—a style that had not been seen in a prominent building for a hundred and fifty years, making Tom Tower a lonely precursor[2] of the Gothic Revival that got underway in the mid-18th century.[3] Wren never came to supervise the structure as it was being erected by the stonemason he had recommended, Christopher Kempster of Burford.[4]

Tom Tower seen from immediately adjacent to the St Aldates entrance to Tom Quad
Tom Gate, the main entrance to Christ Church, beneath Tom Tower, looking in towards Tom Quad

In 1732–34, when William Kent was called upon to make sympathetic reconstruction of the east range of Clock Court in Wolsey's Tudor Hampton Court Palace, he naturally turned to the precedent of Tom Tower for his "central ogee dome with its coronet of pilaster-like gothick finials".[5] The tower of Dunster House at Harvard University is a direct imitation of Tom Tower, though its details have been Georgianised, and stones from Christ Church are installed in one of the house's main entryways.

Tom Tower was the inspiration for the Clock Tower (formally the Old Arts Building) at the University of Auckland.[6]

  1. ^ Wren Society 5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press) 1928:17.
  2. ^ Some other work by Wren, Sir Nicholas Hawksmoor and William Dickinson in the Office of Works is discussed in Giles Worsley, "The Origins of the Gothic Revival: A Reappraisal: The Alexander Prize Essay"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th Series, 3 (1993), pp. 105–150.
  3. ^ Other Gothic work by Wren includes restorations in Westminster Abbey.
  4. ^ Seven letters of Wren to John Fell, Bishop of Oxford, and other documents were published in Wren Society 5 (1928).
  5. ^ Juliet Allan, "New Light on William Kent at Hampton Court Palace" Architectural History, 27 (1984, pp. 50–58), p. 52. Kent's alterations, his first attempt at Gothick, quickly became dated as the Gothic Revival progressed, and were revised in a correcter taste.
  6. ^ "Auckland University Clock Tower". Retrieved 19 May 2019.
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