Oxford Open Doors 2025

Garden Tours

Saturday 13 September: 11.30am and 1.30pm.

Sunday 14 September: 11.30am and 1.30pm.

Join Michael and Beverley Lear (specialists in the conservation of historic gardens and parks) for a tour of the St John's gardens. Discover the fascinating four-hundred-year-history of the gardens, admire some of the most remarkable trees, and learn about ongoing projects to restore historic features and increase biodiversity.

Each tour will be limited to 20 visitors, with spaces offered on a first come, first served basis. Please arrive early to secure a place!

Library and Study Centre Tours

Saturday 13 September: 12pm, 1pm, 2pm and 3pm.

Sunday 14 September: 12pm, 1pm, 2pm and 3pm.

Join current St John's students for a tour of the College's historic libraries and award-winning modern Study Centre. Learn more about our collection of manuscripts, early printed books, and the ghost that (allegedly!) haunts the corridors...

Each tour will be limited to 15 visitors, with spaces offered on a first come, first served basis. Please arrive early to secure a place!

Portraits Tour

Saturday 13 September: 10.30am

Join Dr Georgy Kantor, Keeper of the Pictures, for a tour of the portraits in St John's Hall. These portraits celebrate achievements in fields ranging from medieval history and biochemistry to modern French literature and experimental psychology, as well as accomplishments beyond the academy.

This tour will be limited to 30 visitors, with spaces offered on a first come, first served basis. Please arrive early to secure a place!

Architecture Tour

Saturday 13 September: 11am

Join Professor William Whyte, Keeper of Historic Buildings and Professor of Social and Architectural History at St John's, for a tour of the College. Discover the history of its buildings, and learn more about the fascinating characters who have helped establish St John's as one of Oxford's largest colleges.

This tour will be limited to 40 visitors, with spaces offered on a first come, first served basis. Please arrive early to secure a place!

Like the Back of Your Hand

Saturday 13th September, 12pm, Auditorium.

Professor Lady Sue Black, President of St John’s College, is an anatomist and a forensic anthropologist. In 2006 she took on the most distressing of cases which changed the pattern of her research life for the next 20 years.

In this talk, Sue asks how unique the anatomy of the back of your hand is and she will explain why she cares. She believes the human hand is unique and, if that is correct, then it has tremendous value as a biometric for the identification of both victims and perpetrators of some of the most heinous of society’s crimes.

Learn how to read what your hands can reveal and you will never look at yourself in the same light again. From your freckles and scars to your skin creases and your vein patterns, each of these anatomical patterns are yours and yours alone. As the world moves ever more swiftly into digital dependency, companies have produced scanners that use the uniqueness of hand anatomy to replace bank cards, security passes and passwords. Tomorrow you could be buying your supermarket shop or ordering your next holiday, just by placing your hand in a scanner. How handy would that be?

The Ancient World in Digital Media

Saturday 13th September, 2pm, Auditorium.

Dr Matthew Nicholls and Dr Carolyn La Rocco will give two short talks on the depiction of the ancient world in contemporary media, focusing on film, television, and computer games. Each talk will last approximately 30 minutes, with opportunities for audience questions.

Matthew Nichols, ‘Reconstructing Ancient Rome’

Matthew Nicholls’ digital 3D reconstructions of ancient Rome can be seen across the road in the Ashmolean Museum’s new Rome gallery, as well as in books, documentaries, and online. He was a consultant to Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II and has worked with computer games and TV companies on their visions of Rome. In this talk he will explain how he built his model of Rome and how it has been used for research, teaching, and outreach.

Carolyn La Rocco, ‘Late Roman and Visigothic women in visual media’

This talk will consider how women were depicted (or not depicted) in contemporary art in late Roman or Visigothic Iberia, and also how they are depicted in later art, including medieval and Enlightenment-period paintings, as well as how they have appeared in cinematic depictions: looking at movies that dramatise, eg., the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410, or how women in late antique Iberia functioned as propaganda in movies released during the Franco dictatorship in 20th-century Spain.

Buying and Selling Human Remains: is it OK?

Sunday 14th September, 2pm, Auditorium.

It may surprise many to know that you can buy human bones legally in the UK. They can be put up for auction or even sold in a shop. In a country where we have legislation that makes it illegal to buy or sell a bird’s nest, are we comfortable putting lesser restrictions on the remains of our ancestors?

Professor Lady Sue Black, President of St John’s College, is an anatomist and a forensic anthropologist who has worked with human remains for all of her adult life. She has seen society’s attitudes to skeletal remains change over the years and believes we are now at a point where the government may consider changes in legislation to make the buying and selling of human bones illegal.

Why now? Online vendors sell human bones made into lamps and candle holders. Human teeth are made into jewellery and these artefacts are bought by those with a gothic and occult fascination. Skulls sell for hundreds of pounds and those of children, for even more. The incidence of grave- and mausoleum-robbing has increased. Do we care? Should we care?

Jazz in the Chapel

Saturday 13 September: 1.30pm, Chapel.

Eve Boulos is a British-Arab saxophonist who recently graduated in Music from St John’s College, Oxford. She previously attended St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh (2015–2021), where she developed a strong foundation in both classical and jazz performance, with a particular focus on improvisation. Aspiring to a career in international education, she has recently begun a Postgraduate Certificate in Education at Homerton College, Cambridge.

Her performance in the college chapel brings together a combination of contemporary choral works and traditional songs, with Eve weaving her improvisations around recorded performances to both embellish and reveal new colours in the music, making full use of the beauty of the space. Many of the recordings feature her favourite ensemble, Voces8, a choir she aspires to collaborate with (in real life!) one day.

Programme

• The Seal Lullaby - Eric Whittaker (Recording: Eric Whittaker Singers)
• Shenandoah - traditional (recording: Voces8)
• It’s A Lonesome Old Town - Keith Jarrett
• Ae Fond Kiss - Traditional
• Agnes Dei - Samuel Barber (Recording Voces8)
• (Improvisation)
• Caledonia - Dougie Maclean (Recording: Voces8)
• Strange is the man - Piers Faccini
• Carrickfergus - traditional (Recording: Voces8)
• By Night - (Recording: Voces8)

St John's International Piano Series Launch: Viv McLean

Saturday 13 September: 6pm, Auditorium.

The celebrated pianist Viv McLean will perform a one-hour concert to celebrate the start of the International Piano Series at St John's.

Scarlatti
Sonata in D Minor, K.213
Sonata in A, K.322
Sonata in F Minor, K.466
Sonata in C, K.487

Chopin
Nocturne in G Minor, op. 37 no. 1
Nocturne in E Flat, op. 9 no. 2
Five Mazurkas, op. 7

Gershwin

Rhapsody in Blue

Tickets for this concert are free, but must be booked in advance via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1577312777979?aff=oddtdtcreator

Please note that concert attendees can access the Auditorium via the usual Lodge entrance on St Giles' or via St John's Parks Road gate: OX1 3PD.

Introduction to Choral Music and Organ Demo

Sunday 14 September: 11am, Chapel.

St John's Choir Director, David Bannister, will give an introduction to choral music at St John's, followed by a short demonstration of the organ created for the College by Bernard Aubertin in 2008 with some solo pieces.

Medieval Vestments

Saturday 13 September: 10-4pm, Garden Quad Reception Room.

Sunday 14 September: 10-4pm, Garden Quad Reception Room.

St John's has a remarkable collection of liturgical vestments and embroidery from the late medieval period. The vestments include copes (cloaks), hoods, banners and altar cloths which would have been used for Christian worship in the century before the English Reformation. Owing to the reforms brought about by men such as Thomas Cromwell, there are few surviving examples of pre-Reformation liturgical textiles in this country. St John’s collection is thus one of the best of its kind outside of public galleries and museums in the UK.

'Find the lambs' treasure hunt

Saturday 13th September, 10-4pm.

Sunday 14th September, 10-4pm.

Garden games

Saturday 13th September, 10-4pm, MCR lawn.

Sunday 14th September, 10-4pm, MCR lawn.

We also have a printed family trail, suitable for children in KS1 and KS2. These will be available for free from the College Lodge.

Tea, coffee, fruit juice, and biscuits will be available in our dining hall from 11am – 3pm on Saturday and from 10am – 3pm on Sunday.

Refreshments will cost £3.50 per person. Please note that we cannot accept payment in cash.