Excursion Blog #3: The Oldest Coffee House In England Coffee is one of my most fundamental passions in life. No matter how bad a day is, an iced latte (oat milk) always brings me a bit of joy. As we learned during our unit on Georgian London, coffee houses have played a surprisingly large role in British history history, facilitating business relations, and obviously caffeine, in the burgeoning city of the 18th century. A short walk from my hotel in Oxford was The Grand Café, which advertised itself as the oldest coffee house in England. When I passed it, I knew I would be remiss if I did not go in. I had a pretty good cup of coffee (6.3/10), and a mediocre scone (4/10); it was neither overwhelmingly lovely nor unpleasant. Overall, I expected a bit more from my visit but I was happy to sit in the warmth of the cafe and look out the window at snow falling on the streets of Oxford. Well, life went on after I left the coffee house. I roamed the streets of Oxford not thinking much about my experience at the Grand Café. Until– I decided to go to a different cafe a few mornings later, which happened to be right across the street from the aforementioned coffee house. I sat down, ordered, and looked around the room. What do you know, on the wall, in large black lettering, “We are the longest established coffee house in Europe since 1654”. Naturally, this was both shocking and upsetting. I’d been deceived, but who was telling the truth? It was a mystery demanding to be solved. Further research shed some light on what is actually major drama between the two cafes. The Grand Café website states that it “stands on the precise site that housed the very first Coffee House in England”; well, just because it's in the same location doesn’t mean it's the same coffee house; it’s an entirely separate enterprise. They go on to support their claim by assuring the information is “According to a number of trustworthy sources”, a statement I don’t find entirely compelling. Interestingly, I found that The Queen’s Lane website actually addresses the conundrum. They say, “Now, you may have noticed that there are two coffee shops claiming to be the oldest in Europe, Queen’s Lane Coffee House, and The Grand Café. The Grand Café is known to be the site of the first coffee house in England (according to Samuel Pepys’ Diary, 1650), making it the Oldest, whilst Queen’s Lane, which opened in 1654, is said to be ‘The Longest Established Coffee House in Europe’. This means that Queen’s Lane has always been a coffee shop, since 1654, whereas the Grand Café has opened as many different types of businesses during that time, including a toy shop once. Both of us are proud to be cafes with historical value”. One might think that this statement clears up the issue. But no, there’s more. More research unearthed the astonishing fact that Queen’s Lane has only been at its address since 1970! So, yes, their statement above is technically true. But visitors wanting to step into a coffee house that hosted like-minded coffee drinkers hundreds of years prior would be unable to do so! I’m sure it’s evident that this has been quite the emotional rollercoaster for me. Both establishments are shady and misleading in the way they present themselves. It’s disturbing, really. But I do think it’s pretty funny in the way that British things tend to be funny. The rivalry continues between the two coffee houses, which stand about 30 ft apart, facing each other as the years go on. Will the rivalry ever be settled? Likely not. That familiar friction may just be par for the course. Sources “About.” The Grand Café - Oxford, www.thegrandcafe.co.uk/about/. Accessed 20 Mar. 2023. “Our History.” Queens Lane, www.qlcoffeehouse.com/our-history. Accessed 20 Mar. 2023.
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Excursion Blog #2: Finding Narnia On Tuesday, I set out to find the Pitt Rivers Museum; founded in 1884 and run by the University of Oxford. It was not at all what I expected, one reason being that the Pitt Rivers is actually tucked away through a small doorway within the Oxford University Natural History Museum. So, I initially stepped into a museum I was not intending to find; it was absolutely delightful. One of the best aspects of the Natural History collection is the room it's housed in, the ceilings are triple-height, vaulted glass that give the impression one has just entered into a magnificent greenhouse. The main floor displays skeletons and taxidermies of larger animals, such as horses, giraffes, elephants, a dinosaur (!), prehistoric sea creatures, and arguably my favorite: the immense jaw of a sperm whale. Wrapping around the main room is two stories of birds, insects, gems, rocks, and much, much more. This room alone was enough to almost literally take my breath away, but the actual Pitt Rivers collection was the marvelous cherry-on-top. Across the room from the entrance to the Natural History museum is a small wooden doorway; through it is a collection of archaeological and ethnographic artifacts numbering over 500,000. Stepping through this doorway felt like entering the wardrobe into Narnia, a small, dark portal into a library of all of human history. Where to begin with this room? Items from all over the world, throughout thousands of years of history, including objects from the present-day are displayed behind glass boxes, posted on the walls, filling hundreds of drawers. There are weapons, jewelry, pottery, armor, dolls, figurines, model boats, canoes, sleds, a totem pole towering through all three stories. Being surrounded by all of this left me with a feeling I can’t quite comprehend. It was overwhelming, standing on the third floor overlooking the whole room, feeling all of human history stretch out before me. It is too many lives, too many years, too many springs, summers, falls, and winters for my mind to completely grasp. I knew I could spend a week there and not get through but one floor if I really wanted to look at everything. So I resigned myself to mostly skimming and pausing only at the things that especially caught my eye: the totem pole, more than 37 feet high, purchased for $36 sometime in the 19th century, Chinese playing cards, the first iteration of the modern day 52-card deck, a Megalodon tooth mounted in silver, believed to be an antidote to poison wine, Nigerian scent bottles carved from the seeds of fruit, chainmail armor worn by a cavalry in pre-European-conquest Africa. To me, the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum were much more captivating than the Natural History Museum in London. Oxford’s museums are more tedious, less condensed, not so well suited for the elementary school field trip demographic. It’s got a lot more corners and smaller texts, but in this way it is accurate to the impossible intricacies of world history. Sources “Home | Pitt Rivers Museum.” Ox.ac.uk, 2019, www.prm.ox.ac.uk/. “Museum of Natural History Homepage | Oxford University Museum of Natural History.” Oumnh.ox.ac.uk, oumnh.ox.ac.uk/. Excursion Blog #1: Remember Me The Ashmolean in Oxford may be my favorite art museum to date. There are a number of reasons I believe it deserves such a prestigious title, one of them being its incredible collection of antique jewelry, particularly rings. I love jewelry in a personal sense, beautiful, wearable art, but I also find it fascinating how certain designs appear throughout thousands of years of human history and across geography. There’s evidence of this everywhere– the Egyptians and their gold hoop earrings, strings of *jade beads on necklaces from the Roman Empire, Victorian signet rings– the list goes on. I truly loved all the rings in the display case, of which there were hundreds, but the piece I found most striking was Princess Amelia’s (1783 – 1810) mourning ring, an oval bezel with white enamel and the text “REMEMBER ME”. Amelia, the reported favorite daughter of King George III, died at 27 after several bouts with various illnesses. Fifty-two of these rings were commissioned by her brother following her death, and distributed at her funeral to friends and family. The design was inspired by a ring Amelia gave to her father in the last moments of her life, while saying “remember me”. There is something about the simplicity of the phrase, “remember me” that I find particularly moving. It is so simple and so deeply desperate. A single request that seems to shout out through history to reach us now, standing in a museum, remembering her. Taking Art History this semester has also deepened my ability to enjoy museums. At one point, I looked down a grand staircase to find a portrait I immediately recognized to be Anthony Van Dyck, and later another painting that I felt to be definitively Gainsborough, which was correct. This seems to me like a slightly annoying but overall very cool thought to be able to have. I would describe the layout of the Ashmolean to be something comparable to a labyrinth. Each room seems to lead to another within another, a Russian nesting doll of delightful works of art. Sources “METALWORK, JEWELLERY and WATCH COLLECTION.” Www.ashmolean.org, www.ashmolean.org/metalwork-jewellery-and-watches. Accessed 11 Mar. 2023. “Rowan and Rowan : Princess Amelia.” Rowan and Rowan, 16 Jan. 2021, www.rowanandrowan.com/princess-amelia/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2023. “VAN DYCK PORTRAIT.” Www.ashmolean.org, www.ashmolean.org/van-dyck-portrait-archived. Accessed 11 Mar. 2023. |