The Grove

The Grove is the oldest part of what we would refer to as garden space in College. The garden here dates back to 1463, when the land previously called Oliphant Hall was bought from University College. At the time it extended to the back of the kitchen and served as the ‘cooks garden’ growing fresh produce for the kitchen. In fact, the earliest record of the college garden is a purchase order from 1487 for onion seeds.

In 1606 the Rector was given the garden for private use on one condition, that he continued to supply “sufficient, wholesome and sweet herbs” for College use when necessary.

The Grove also once contained a tennis court, situated in the north east corner next to Brasenose. There are various accounts records relating to the tennis court, the earliest being in 1566 when Mr William Fairbead was paid for “setting railes (fences) in the tennis court and gardens”. In 1648, 5s 4d was paid “for making a partition betwixt ye ball court and garden”. There are also several records of new locks being purchased for the tennis court door and dirt being removed and replaced, telling us that it would have indeed been a well-used asset.

Today the most striking feature of the Grove is the magnificent London plane tree. We don’t have a record of it being planted but we can estimate its age by comparing it against other trees in the species. At approx. 35m tall with a 6m girth, puts it at about 250 years old. It has exfoliating bark, which means the bark breaks away in large flakes to dispel pollutants, hence the tree’s ability to cope with high levels of air pollution and the reason for the trunk’s distinctive camouflage pattern. This was realised by the Victorians during the heavy pollution of the industrial revolution and subsequently thousands of London planes were planted in the capital, in the 1920s around 60% of trees in London and they remain the most common tree in London to this day.

The Grove is also the site of a curious carving above the Beckington Room. It is known as the Bishop’s Rebus and is a visual pun of Beckington’s name. It depicts a flaming beacon, or a beck, sitting in a tun barrel. A beck in a tun, or Beckington. There are examples of carvings on other beneficiaries of Beckington, including on the rectory in Sutton Courtney, and the most well-known display of the bishop’s rebus is on penniless porch in Wells where Beckington served as bishop.

Front Quad

In Front Quad, the origins of climbing plants on the walls goes back to the second founder of Lincoln, Thomas Rotherham, when in 1474 he visited the college and preached the psalm: “Behold, and visit this vine, and complete it. which Thy right hand hath founded”. The psalm is still sung to this day at the installation of a new Rector.

Rotherham was moved by this and subsequently made a generous donation to complete the college. To commemorate his generosity a vine was planted in the quad and since at least one climbing plant has been grown on the walls. Today we don’t have a vine but two plant species covering the walls. The smaller of which is a climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea petiolaris) and perhaps Lincoln’s most well-known horticultural asset, the Boston Ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidate). It is often misidentified as Virginia Creeper but the two can be distinguished by the leaf shape. Boston Ivy has three points on the leaf, hence the epithet ‘tricuspidate’, whereas Virginia Creeper with the epithet ‘quinquefolia’ has five.

Front Quad also features the quintessential Oxford college formal lawn. Prior to the late Victorian era, lawns were mostly limited to the upper classes as they were labor intensive and costly to maintain and so were a real show of wealth. This all changed when the first petrol powered lawn mowers became available making well-kept lawns more achievable in the middle classes and this is when most colleges followed suit and started to lay turf. The lawn at Lincoln was first laid in 1947, prior to which it served as a functional, domestic space probably of compacted dirt or gravel. Merton and Corpus are the rare examples where the original paved front quads still exist today.

Chapel Quad

The Chapel was built in 1630, but somewhat surprisingly prior to this it was the site of a college bowling alley. In 1617, a record exists for 12d spent of “mending the wall in the bowling alley” with the last record of 3s 8d “for the bowling alley” spent in 1625. With the Chapel being built in 1630, it is likely that the bowling alley was demolished to make way for construction of the Chapel.

Rector’s Garden

The land which the Rector’s Garden now occupies was originally owned by Abingdon Abbey. The College bought this land in around 1517, when the Rector Thomas Drax, the Bursar Thomas Bassett and their lawyer were given 8d from the College accounts for wine to “make a bargain for the vacant ground against our gate”. Presumably they believed the monks of Abingdon abbey would be more agreeable to selling their land if they were given wine! What is now the Rector’s Garden used to be the Fellows Garden and the two were exchanged after construction of the current Rector’s lodgings in the late 1920’s.

Fellows’ Garden

The current Fellow’s Garden was also the site of a late medieval side street known as ‘Rotten Row’. It probably got the nickname because of dilapidated cottages and pits which were possibly used for disposing of rubbish. During construction of the Berrow Foundation building in 2013, archeologists found evidence of a bakery, metal works and a well. It was demolished in the late 17th century and the land was incorporated into the gardens. The north wall of the well house, however, was retained and this formed the boundary between the Rector’s and Fellow’s gardens until it was removed during construction. Now the two gardens are free flowing with the Rector’s Garden screened off with a multi-stem katsura tree.