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'Tom Tower' is a bell tower in Oxford, England, named for its bell, Great Tom. It is over the main entrance of Christ Church, Oxford in Tom Quad, on St Aldate's. This square tower with an octagonal lantern and facetted ogee dome was designed by Christopher Wren and built 1681–82. The strength of Oxford architectural tradition and Christ Church's connection to its founder, Henry VIII, motivated the decision to complete the gatehouse structure, left unfinished by Cardinal Wolsey at the date of his fall from power in 1529, and which had remained roofless since. Wren made a case for working in a late Gothic style— that it "ought to be Gothick to agree with the Founders worke"^[1]— a style that had not been seen in a prominent building for a hundred and fifty years, making Tom Tower a lonely precursor^[2] of the Gothic Revival that got under way in the mid-eighteenth century.^[3] Wren never came to supervise the structure as it was being erected by the mason he has recommended, Christopher Kempster, of Burford.^[4]
Great Tom, housed in the tower, is the loudest bell in Oxford. It weighs around seven tons and was moved from the 12th century Osney Abbey after the Protestant Reformation. Traditionally, the bell in Tom Tower is sounded 101 times at 9:05 pm each evening — to recall the original 100 scholars of the college (plus one added in 1663) — before the gates were locked for the night.
In 1732-34, when William Kent was called upon to make sympathetic reconstruction of the east range of Clock Court in Wolsey's Tudor Hampton Court Palace, he naturally turned to the precedent of Tom Tower for his "central ogee dome with its coronet of pilaster-like gothick finials"^[5]
The tower of Dunster House at Harvard University is a direct imitation of Tom Tower, and stones from Christ Church are installed in one of the house's main entryways. It has been pointed out by many Pembroke College students that the best view of Tom Tower is from their porter's lodge, off St Aldates road.

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See also

★ Magdalen Tower, Oxford

Notes

1. ''Wren Society'' '5' (Oxford: Clarendon Press) 1928:17.
2. Some other work by Wren, Sir Nicholas Hawksmoor and William Dickinson in the Office of Works is discussed in Giles Worsley, "The Origins of the Gothic Revival: A Reappraisal: The Alexander Prize Essay"''Transactions of the Royal Historical Society'' 6th Series '3' (1993), pp. 105-150.
3. Other Gothic work by Wren includes restorations in Westminster Abbey.
4. Seven letters of Wren to John Fell, Bishop of Oxford, and other documents were published in ''Wren Society'' '5' (1928).
5. Juliet Allan, "New Light on William Kent at Hampton Court Palace" ''Architectural History'' '27' (1984, pp. 50-58), p. 52. Kent's alterations, his first attempt at Gothick, quickly became dated as the Gothic Revival progressed, and were revised in a correcter taste.

References

★ Jennifer Sherwood and Nikolaus Pevsner, ''The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire''. ISBN 0-14-071045-0.

★ ''Wren Society'' vol 5: "Designs of Sir Christopher Wren for Oxford, Cambridge..." (1928).

External links

★ Images of Tom Tower

★ W.H. Auden (1907–1973) Under Tom Tower by Richard Ellmann