Tom Tower
Oxford, United Kingdom
Exterior only
Visible from the street; the inside is private.
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Tom Tower is a bell tower at Christ Church, Oxford, standing over Tom Gate on St Aldates as the main entrance to the college. Designed by Christopher Wren and built in 1681–82, this square tower with an octagonal lantern and faceted ogee dome completes a gatehouse structure initiated by Cardinal Wolsey in the early sixteenth century but left roofless after his fall from power in 1529. Wren's deliberate choice to work in Late Gothic style—arguing it "ought to be Gothick to agree with the Founders worke"—made Tom Tower a striking anomaly, reviving a medieval idiom a century and a half before the Gothic Revival took hold. The tower was erected by stonemason Christopher Kempster of Burford without Wren's on-site supervision. Its architectural precedent proved influential, inspiring reconstructions at Hampton Court Palace and becoming the direct model for structures at Harvard University and the University of Auckland.
Architect
- Type
- bell tower
- Place
- Oxford, United Kingdom
This building on
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Location