Queer Heritage · Oxford, Oxfordshire
Magdalen College, Oxford (Wilde's aesthetic years)
Where Wilde perfected the pose — blue china, sunflowers, a double first — that became the aesthetic movement. Oxford also formed the circles through which, years later, Bosie entered his life. The college that made the wit made the tragedy possible.
Sources
Nearby on the map
Ottoline Morrell's Tudor manor was the great house-party of literary modernism: Bertrand Russell was her lover, Lawrence repaid her hospitality by putting her in 'Women in Love', and the peacock-stalked gardens hosted more entanglements than the guest book could decently record.
Documented historyHot spotFolk Rite & FertilityUffington White Horse & the MangerUffington, Oxfordshire · EnglandThe oldest chalk figure in Britain, a 360ft Bronze Age horse leaping across the scarp above the dry valley called the Manger. Local folklore made the hill a fertility landscape — couples still climb it on midsummer nights — though the documented rite is the seven-yearly 'scouring' festival of the 1700s.
Documented + folkloreBohemian & LibertineMedmenham Abbey (the Monks of Medmenham)Medmenham, Buckinghamshire · EnglandThe riverside sham-gothic abbey where Dashwood's order first met, its door inscribed with Rabelais's 'Fais ce que tu voudras'. Contemporaries whispered of mock rites and masked ladies arriving by barge; the truth was scandalous enough that every account since has struggled to separate orgy from embellishment — this entry says so plainly.
Documented historySpotted an error, or hold a better source? Write to marquis@marquisdemayfair.com — corrections are made, never defended. Our methodology.