In the winter of 1741, work on Oxford’s most ambitious building stopped entirely. The dome (already partly erected in stone) was judged unsafe. Over the following months, the stone was removed piece by piece and the structure rebuilt in timber, then sheathed in lead. The process took more than a year. When the scaffolding finally came down, two workmen died in the accident. They are not named in any account of the building that would later be called one of England’s finest.
The Radcliffe Camera’s original purpose was not the reading room it has become, nor the picturesque centrepiece of a thousand Oxford photographs. It was built to house a science library, an institution funded by the fortune of a physician who had never been particularly fond of Oxford, designed by a Scottish architect who almost didn’t get the commission, and constructed by a team of craftsmen whose names survive only in the Trustees’ minute books. Understanding what the building was for, and what it cost to create, changes how it looks.
The physician who left Oxford his money
John Radcliffe was born in 1650 in Wakefield, Yorkshire, and studied at University College, Oxford, in the 1660s. He became the most successful physician of his generation, eventually serving as doctor to King William III, Queen Mary II, and Queen Anne. He accumulated an enormous fortune. He did not, by most accounts, have warm feelings toward Oxford, and his relationship with the university was complicated by his refusal, on political grounds, to attend the dying William III and his blunt manner with several royal patients. Queen Anne reportedly forgave him this. Oxford, in time, decided to forgive him too.
When Radcliffe died on 1 November 1714, his will directed £40,000 (a sum sufficient to build one of the largest and most elaborately finished buildings in England) toward a library for the university. He also left money to purchase books, to maintain the building, and to pay a full-time librarian. His will was precise about the money. It was not precise about the building’s form, which meant the decision fell to four trustees he had nominated: William Bromley, sometime Speaker of the House of Commons; Sir George Beaumont, a Lord of the Admiralty; Antony Keck, a banker; and Thomas Sclater Bacon, a lawyer. These four men would spend the next twenty-three years arguing over land, negotiating with colleges, passing an Act of Parliament, and watching architects come and go before a single stone was laid.
Twenty years of negotiation for a site
The site Radcliffe’s will had in mind was a block of land north of the Schools Quadrangle, on what was then Catte Street, a narrow thoroughfare lined with houses, shops, and student lodgings. The problem was that this land belonged to several different parties. Brasenose College held student accommodations there, a coach house, and a brewery. Oriel, Magdalen, and University College all had interests in adjacent properties. Private individuals owned houses and shops. The Trustees needed every one of these parcels.
In 1720, Parliament passed the Radcliffe Camera Act specifically to allow university corporations to sell ground for the purpose of building a library. Even so, negotiations continued for another seventeen years. The very last house on the site was demolished in 1733. Then there was a further delay: Radcliffe’s will had made provision for his last surviving sister, Hannah, and the funds could not be released until her death. Hannah Radcliffe died in 1736, more than two decades after her brother. Within months, construction began.
Hawksmoor, Gibbs, and the decision that shaped Oxford
The Trustees had been thinking about an architect since at least 1720. They considered Christopher Wren, John Vanbrugh, Thomas Archer, and others, before in 1734 inviting Nicholas Hawksmoor and James Gibbs to submit plans directly. Hawksmoor (who had already shaped much of All Souls College just yards from the proposed site) produced a detailed wooden model of his design. It was well received. The Trustees appeared to favour it. Then, in March 1736, Hawksmoor died, before a single stone had been laid. The commission passed to Gibbs.
James Gibbs was a Scotsman from Aberdeen, trained in Rome, already known for St Martin-in-the-Fields in London and a string of country houses. His design for the Radcliffe Camera drew on Roman prototypes (the Pantheon most visibly) and on the Baroque tradition he had absorbed in Italy. He proposed a circular building of three ascending tiers: a heavily rusticated base with arched openings, a drum of paired columns, and a dome of lead-covered timber. Horace Walpole, who disliked almost everything about Gibbs, later described his style as having “no aversion to ponderosity.” The criticism reveals more about Walpole than about the building, which is, by any measure, one of the most confident and assured structures erected in eighteenth-century England.
The craftsmen who built it
On 4 March 1737, the Trustees directed Gibbs to work with two master masons to begin preparing materials. Francis Smith of Warwick was one; William Townsend of Oxford was the other. Smith died in 1738, almost at the start of building operations, and was replaced by his son William Smith. That succession, father to son, one generation continuing another’s contract, is characteristic of how building work was organised in provincial England in this period, and it is the kind of detail that does not appear in any account of the building that focuses on Gibbs’s architectural achievement rather than the labour that made it.
Gibbs recorded the full list of craftsmen in his own publication, Bibliotheca Radcliviana, printed in 1747. William Townsend’s son handled the stone carving. John Phillips was the carpenter and joiner. George Devall was the plumber. A carver in wood named Linel came from Long Acre in London. Joseph Artari, described by Gibbs simply as “an Italian,” was responsible for the plasterwork in the fretwork manner. The elaborate interior ceiling decoration that catches visitors’ eyes the moment they enter. Michael Rysbrack, one of the finest sculptors then working in England, was commissioned to carve the marble statue of Radcliffe that still stands inside; it is six feet tall and cost £220. The ironwork for the seven exterior arches was made by Robert Bakewell of Derby, whose original estimate proved too low (he blamed the French war for the cost increase) and who was eventually paid £364.
The foundation stone was laid on 17 May 1737, inscribed with a copper plate naming the Chancellor (the Earl of Arran), the Vice-Chancellor (Stephen Niblett), the proctors, and the five Trustees then living: Carolus Noel Somerset, John Verney, Walter Wagstaff Bagot, Edward Harley, and Edward Smith.
The dome crisis and two unnamed deaths
Construction proceeded without serious incident until February 1741. The dome, which had been partly erected in stone following the lower structure’s completion, was judged structurally unsatisfactory. The Trustees ordered work to stop. Over the following months, the stone work of the dome was partially dismantled, and the decision was made to complete it instead in timber, sheathed in lead. The revised dome was finished by March 1743, more than a year lost to the redesign and reconstruction.
When the scaffolding was struck, two workmen died in the accident. The Trustees’ minute books record the event without naming them. The exterior of the building was pronounced complete in 1747. The interior was finished in 1748. The library opened on 13 April 1749.
The first librarian and a post office campaign
Radcliffe had, before his death, indicated informally that he wanted Thomas Hearne, a sub-librarian of the Bodleian, to become the first librarian of his new institution. Hearne was one of the finest antiquaries of his generation and had worked at the Bodleian since 1695. He was also a Non-Juror who had refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Hanoverian monarchy and had consequently been stripped of his Bodleian position in 1716. The Trustees did not appoint him.
The post remained unfilled for years. In 1737, another Bodleian sub-librarian, Francis Wise, began a sustained campaign to secure it. He wrote to influential figures including the Duke of Newcastle. By the time the library opened in 1749, Wise had won his appointment and became the Radcliffe’s first librarian. He was followed eventually by George Williams, who narrowed the library’s focus to the sciences and, by the time of his death in 1834, had transformed an institution widely considered to be in neglect into a functioning scientific resource. Williams’s successor John Kidd introduced gas heating and lighting, published the library’s first catalogue in 1835, and hired the institution’s first assistant.
Henry Wentworth Acland and the end of the original purpose
The Radcliffe Library opened as a science library and remained one for a century. By the 1850s, its collection of fourteen to fifteen thousand volumes was substantial but no longer competitive with the Bodleian’s own scientific holdings. Henry Wentworth Acland, who became librarian in the 1850s, concluded that the building was more valuable than the institution it housed. In 1856 he presented his proposal to the Trustees: the science collection should move to a purpose-built facility, and the building should become a reading room for the Bodleian. Both the Trustees and the university accepted. On 23 October 1861, Acland handed the keys to the Bodleian’s librarian.
The building was modified for its new role in 1863, when a new north entrance was cut through what had been a circular window and the archways of the exterior arcade were glazed. Between 1909 and 1912, an underground bookstore of two floors was constructed beneath the north lawn, linked to the Bodleian by a tunnel that allowed books to be passed between the two libraries without exposure to the elements. The iron railings that had surrounded the Camera since 1827 were removed in 1936, opening up the square and giving the building the unimpeded setting it now has.
The freehold of the building was transferred from the Radcliffe Trustees to the university in 1927, ending the formal independence of the institution Radcliffe had created more than two centuries earlier.
Genealogy research note
If you have an ancestor connected to the Radcliffe Camera (as a craftsman, college employee, bookseller, or Oxford resident during the construction or early library period) the primary sources are more accessible than is commonly known.
The Oxford University Archives, held at the Bodleian Library, holds the Trustees’ Minute Books and Building Book from the construction period (1737–1749). These name the craftsmen employed on the building and record payments made to them. Researchers interested in the Smith family of Warwick (masons), the Townsend family of Oxford (masons and stone carvers), or Robert Bakewell of Derby (ironworker) will find documentary evidence of their work on the Radcliffe Camera in these records. An appointment to view them can be arranged through the Bodleian’s reader services.
For librarians, the Radcliffe Science Library Archive and the Oxford University Archives both hold records of library staff appointments, correspondence, and administration from the mid-eighteenth century onwards.
The Oxfordshire History Centre in Cowley holds records of Oxford city parishes, including St Mary the Virgin (the University Church immediately north of the Camera), whose registers cover baptisms, marriages, and burials from the sixteenth century. Craftsmen working in Oxford in the 1730s and 1740s who were residents of the city may appear in these registers.
For the Townsend and Smith families specifically, the Warwickshire County Record Office holds probate, guild, and property records relating to the Smith family of Warwick, who were the most prominent mason dynasty in the English Midlands in the early eighteenth century and worked on numerous major buildings across the region.
Stephen Hebron’s 2014 study Dr Radcliffe’s Library: The Story of the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford (Bodleian Library Publishing) is the most thorough narrative account of the building’s history and is the recommended starting point for any serious genealogical or archival research into the people who built or worked in it.
TheGenealogist holds indexed Oxfordshire and Warwickshire parish registers and census returns that complement the building accounts and Warwickshire County Record Office records well; their Oxfordshire and Warwickshire parish and census records are the practical starting point for tracing a craftsman identified in the Trustees’ minute books into a wider family and parish context.
Named individuals index for Radcliffe Camera original purpose
| Name | Dates | Role |
|---|---|---|
| John Radcliffe | 1650–1714 | Physician to William III, Mary II, and Queen Anne; left £40,000 for the library |
| Hannah Radcliffe | d.1736 | Radcliffe’s last surviving sister; her death in 1736 released the funds for construction |
| William Bromley | 1663–1732 | Sometime Speaker of the House of Commons; one of Radcliffe’s four original trustees |
| Sir George Beaumont | 1659–1737 | Lord of the Admiralty; one of Radcliffe’s four original trustees |
| Antony Keck | d.c.1720s | Banker; one of Radcliffe’s four original trustees |
| Thomas Sclater Bacon | Active early 18th century | Lawyer; one of Radcliffe’s four original trustees |
| Nicholas Hawksmoor | 1661–1736 | Architect; submitted model for the Radcliffe Library, died March 1736 before the commission was confirmed |
| James Gibbs | 1682–1754 | Scottish architect; designed the Radcliffe Camera; published Bibliotheca Radcliviana (1747) |
| Francis Smith | 1672–1738 | Master mason of Warwick; originally contracted for the building; died 1738 during construction |
| William Smith | Active 1730s–1740s | Mason of Warwick; son of Francis Smith; succeeded his father on the Radcliffe Camera contract |
| William Townsend | 1669–1739 | Master mason of Oxford; contracted alongside Francis Smith; his son handled the stone carving |
| John Phillips | Active 1737–1749 | Carpenter and joiner on the Radcliffe Camera; worked on floors, windows, and bookshelves |
| George Devall | Active 1737–1749 | Plumber on the Radcliffe Camera |
| Linel | Active 1737–1749 | Wood carver from Long Acre, London; carved the Camera’s wooden decorative elements |
| Joseph Artari | c.1700–1769 | Italian plasterer responsible for the fretwork plasterwork of the Camera’s interior |
| Michael Rysbrack | 1694–1770 | Sculptor; carved the six-foot marble statue of Radcliffe installed in the Camera in 1749 (cost £220) |
| Robert Bakewell | 1682–1752 | Blacksmith of Derby; made the ironwork gates for the seven exterior arches (cost £364) |
| Thomas Hearne | 1678–1735 | Bodleian sub-librarian and antiquary; informally Radcliffe’s preferred choice as first librarian; not appointed |
| Francis Wise | 1695–1767 | Bodleian sub-librarian; lobbied successfully for the position; appointed first librarian of the Radcliffe Library in 1749 |
| George Williams | Active early 19th century | Librarian; narrowed the collection to sciences; credited with rescuing the library from neglect; died 1834 |
| John Kidd | 1775–1851 | Librarian after Williams; introduced gas heating and lighting; published the library’s first catalogue in 1835 |
| Henry Wentworth Acland | 1815–1900 | Librarian who proposed merging the Radcliffe Library with the Bodleian; handed keys to the Bodleian’s librarian on 23 October 1861 |
| Horace Walpole | 1717–1797 | Writer and critic; dismissed Gibbs’s style as “no aversion to ponderosity” in his notes on English architecture |
Further reading and resources on Oxford Radcliffe Camera original purpose
- Medieval Oxford: https://universityhistoryarchive.org/medieval-oxford-university/
- St. Scholastica’s Day Riot: https://universityhistoryarchive.org/oxford_town_and_gown_riots_1355/
- TheGenealogist – indexed Oxfordshire and Warwickshire parish registers, census returns, and civil registration records for tracing craftsmen and Oxford residents connected to the Camera’s construction period
- Oxford University Archives (Bodleian): https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/oxford-university-archives
- Bodleian Libraries – Radcliffe Camera: https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/libraries/radcliffe-camera
- British History Online – VCH Oxfordshire on the Radcliffe Camera: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol3/pp55-56
- Oxfordshire History Centre: https://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/residents/museums-and-history
- Warwickshire County Record Office (for Smith family records): https://heritage.warwickshire.gov.uk/catalogues-databases
