The College Archives contain a wide range of records relating to aspects of the College’s history beginning with Elizabeth I’s foundation charter in 1571. Many records are concerned with finance: these include Bursar’s accounts from 1631 to 1881 and a nearly unbroken series of Battel and Buttery Books from 1637 to 1947. Governance records survive from 1602, first as College Registers and then as Governing Body Minutes, and there are estate records for the College properties in various Welsh and English counties.
We also have private papers including correspondence and papers of a number of Principals and Fellows and social records in the form of minutes and other papers for College societies and clubs. For the more recent period there is a photographic collection that is particularly strong in sporting groups.
Other items of interest in the College Archives include:
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Admissions Registers and records from 1882
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T.E. Lawrence’s thesis on Crusader castles
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A full run of the College Magazine from its beginning in 1912
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Fresher photographs for almost every year since 1966
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JCR minutes from 1892 (with gaps!)
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17th and 18th Century catalogues and other records of the Library
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the 1622 College Statutes
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Plans and drawings of College buildings
Donations of documents and photographs by Old Members of the College and external sources help the College Archivist to add to this hugely important resource and to research new and forgotten areas of College life. In return, the resources of the Archive are made available to all enquirers with a need to use them - academics, Old Members, local historians or those just interested in what their grandparent was doing at Oxford