The Other Place

I was invited to a graduation ceremony at The Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford on Saturday which was great fun. The Sheldonian is so-called because it was funded, in 1664, by Gilbert Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury and a former Warden of All Souls. It was designed by a young Christopher Wren, then Professor of Astronomy at Oxford and with little practical experience of building. He wanted to base the design on that of a Roman theatre. Roman theatres were, of course, open air and so the problem was how build the same structure in Oxford with a roof but without any load-bearing columns in the central space. Wren designed a roof truss spanning seventy feet, a technical achievement which gained him enormous credit in scientific and architectural circles.
The truss is concealed by a ceiling painted by Robert Streater. The theme is the triumph of the Arts and Sciences over Envy, Rapine and "brutish scoffing ignorance".