Christ Church: A Tour

Hello and welcome to Christchurch. My name is Rafi and I study medicine here and I've been here for the past six years. Christchurch is a large college and it's a mixed college of both undergrads and postgrads with about 215 graduate students. This is the GCR or the Graduate Common Room and it's a shared area that's available for use by all graduate students here at Christchurch and it's also the place where we host multiple events such as BUPs, which are big parties, whiskey and wine tasting sessions, movie screenings and whatever else you can think of. But the GCR is not just a physical space, the GCR refers to the entire graduate community of Christchurch with its own committee and its own events and over there in front of us is the deanery where the dean of Christchurch lives and the reason it's of interest is because it's technically an unoccupied royal palace and because King Charles, I think it was during the Civil War, actually stayed here and ran parliament from the Great Hall. Door handle on the deanery's door, that was for the Alice from Alice in Wonderland, who was actually one of the dean's daughters and so that little door handle was there for her and the guy who wrote Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, was the librarian at Christchurch and wrote Alice in Wonderland, a series of stories he told Alice when he was babysitting her. So it's a big part of the Christchurch mythology. This is Peck Water Court where we have our Christmas tree and around Peck, if you can see, there's commemorations of our sporting victories. So for most of the colleges there's a mixed graduate and undergraduate team apart from things like football where there's a competitive GCR and JCR team. Christchurch also offers a range of sports facilities including tennis courts, cricket greens, rugby pitches and a multi-use sports area as well as squash courts just across the road in St Aldate's Quad. The rowing club and its facilities and free access to the university gym. So this is the library, so it's two floors, there's a lower library and an upper library. It's a study space free for use by both undergrads and postgrads, really well stocked with almost every book you could need for your course. If you still need your own copy of the or indeed if you need any other equipment for your research or need to travel for field work or conference purposes, Christchurch has a very generous travel, research and equipment grant for you to use including electronic resources and hardware. So welcome to the Great Hall, obviously set up for social distancing at the moment but normally you'd be able to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner here and there are two dinner sittings every night. An informal sitting around 6pm which is sort of cafeteria style where you grab your meal, sit and eat it and then a 7pm formal sitting where you wear your gowns, read the Latin grace before dinner, don't actually have to wear formal wear and get a served three course meal. In addition for graduate students every Wednesday there's either an exchange dinner where we go for one leg in another college's hall and then they come to our hall for the other leg or there's a guest dinner where you get the same food as high table where the tutors sit, you get that with some wine for your meal and once a term there's a black tie night which has a four course meal, wine and a Prosecco reception. Whole food is generally very good and is able to cater for a variety of dietary requirements including halal, vegetarian, vegan and various food and nut allergies. So this here is the butchery, one of two bars at Christchurch and so you can come here and grab a bottle of wine or a beer just before dinner and take it with you into the hall. Dinner is a fantastic experience and a way to meet lots of different people from all over the world who are all really passionate and really clever and really good at what they do and it makes for some fantastic conversations that you probably won't have anywhere else. So this is the Undercroft bar, the second bar. Normally this is where events like karaoke nights or post-guest dinner drinks would happen. There's a pool table and a darts board and generally a nice place to come and watch the football or the rugby as well or grab a few drinks and it's open most evenings during the week. However during Covid times obviously this has shut down and instead has been moved to a temporary bar up in a marquee in the Master's Garden. Here at Christchurch there's also a range of welfare support available to graduate students. So this ranges from your college advisor who will be in your specific field of study and can provide a second opinion on academic matters and someone else to go for besides your main detail or master's thesis supervisor. From a more pastoral side there's also Claire who's the welfare coordinator who's fantastic at what she does and there's also the GCR welfare reps and a peer support system and three wardens who are on call out of hours in case of any welfare emergencies that happen outside working hours. So this here is the Master's Garden which is a private garden open only to members of Christchurch. It's normally open during the summer which is a great place to just come and read a book out in the sun, sit with some friends and also during Covid times a marquee has been put up so as a temporary bar in the evenings but also as a site for various sorts of welfare and other events to happen in a socially distanced manner as well. Christchurch is also unique amongst Oxford's colleges in that it has a cathedral rather than a chapel with a variety of services operating throughout the year open to people of all faiths or none and is a great place to just come and find some peace and quiet in the middle of a busy Oxford term. My favourite thing about being a student at Christchurch is definitely the people that you meet along the way from the very friendly custodians that greet you to the porters that help you out to the whole staff that helps serve you your meals and everyone is really friendly and willing to have a chat and then that's not to mention all the students from all over the world studying all sorts of different subjects where you have dinner conversations that I don't think I'd ever have anywhere else and that has been an absolute treasure over the past six years.