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Wadham College, Oxford

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Wadham College
Established: 1610
University: University of Oxford
Address: Wadham College, Oxford, OX1 3PN
Telephone: 01865 277900
Website: Wadham.ox.ac.uk
Student Union/JCR website: Wadham SU
Admittance: Men and women (undergraduates and graduates)


Wadham was founded in 1610 by Dorothy Wadham, widow of Nicholas, at the behest of his will. Since then, Wadham has had its fair share of famous alumni (and alumnae), tutors, and Wardens, as well as being part of the first group of historically male colleges to go mixed. In the past, the JCR has been known for student radicalism, but you're more likely to find budding journalists and thesps in the bar than communist revolutionaries.

Contents

Location

Wadham is on Parks Road, close to its junction with Broad St; and just a few moments walk from the Sheldonian, the Bodleian, the Radcliffe Camera, the University Parks and the labs of the Science Parks. Neighbouring colleges include New, Hertford, Harris Manchester and Mansfield.

Wadham College Lodge
Wadham College Lodge

Accommodation

Students at Wadham are guaranteed accomodation within college for the first and final years of their course, with the opportunity (subject to demand) to live in Wadham's Merrifield flats in Summertown in the second (or fourth) years of their course, although this is not guaranteed.

Most of the rooms on the Front quad are shared, but have really big living rooms (ditto some on the Back Quad); the dedicated rooms for pupils with disabilities are nice and well adapted; the modern rooms on the Bar Quad vary in size, but are all big enough (far bigger than rooms at other unis!) and every room - EVERY room - is unique.

Wadham is about to undertaken a large-scale renovation programme of one side of the Front Quad (around 30 rooms) and will make them all into en-suites. Temporarily, this means that fewer graduates will live in college (with rooms on their dedicated staircase, Library Court, likely to go to freshers starting in October 2008), and some third years are being asked to spend their final or penultimate year at Merrifield or in flats rented by the college from Balliol, on Jowett Walk.

Social Spaces

The JCR Quad houses a number of Wadham's social amenities: the JCR, laundry room, JCR kitchen, the bar, a squash court and the Moser Theatre, which doubles as a badminton court.

Library and Computing

Wadham's library is self-service and open 24 hours, as is the computer room, with access gained via students' Bod cards.

Welfare

Atmosphere

Wadham is well-known for being liberal, progressive and friendly, with a relatively high number of state school students. It is one of the largest undergraduate colleges, and was one of the first all-male colleges to accept women; it hosts Queer Festival, formally Queer Bop, (Michaelmas) and Wadstock (a twelve-hour live music festival held in Trinity). It also has one of the best reputations for entz in the university, hosting bops five times per term in Michaelmas and Hilary. They are sufficiently popular that entry is restricted to Wadhamites only (apart from the ticketed Queer Bop and Wadstock).

Wadham also has some of the friendliest porters in the university, and the Lodge sells excellent fair trade chocolate bars.

Sports

There are 3 football teams, men and women's boat crews, a hockey team with Corpus ('Warpus'), trampolining Cuppers side (mixed); Gaelic Football Cuppers side, men's darts, men's rubgy, women's rugby Fives, as well as Ultimate Frisby!

Facilities

  • Squash and Badminton courts
  • Small rowing room with 8 rowing machines and two roweasy machines

Student-eye view