Buildings & Gardens

College Facilities

The Observatory

Observatory from the East

When the College was given the telescope by Mrs Bateson, wife of the Master of St John's, in 1891, there was no observatory ready to house it. There was, however, a mound ready for it—the mound on which a multiple sundial now stands, between Peile and Kennedy. At that time. Peile had not been built, so the western sky could be seen, between the houses of Grange Road. However, when Peile was built, a better site for the telescope had to be found; this was at the southern end of the College playing fields.

An observatory was built, a simple wooden room, painted white, with revolving roof. It was placed directly on the ground, without foundations or even a stone or brickwork base. The dome roof was placed on about ten iron balls, and it was pulled round by two ropes. It was a very unsatisfactory arrangement, as the balls shifted their relative position: sometimes all the balls were clumped together on, say, the south side, while the northern edge of the roof had no support. In about 1985, the balls were replaced by a set of wheels fixed to the edge of the dome and running in a track. Pulling the roof was made much easier: one person could do it, by a rope fixed at one end to the roof and running between double-sheave pulleys.

The wooden board walls of the observatory tended to rot at the base. A domestic bursar at the College in the 1990’s had connections with the army, and was able to arrange that the entire observatory was re-built by an army unit of apprentice-tradesmen: carpenters, brick-layers, metal workers and so on. While this was in progress, the telescope itself and the transit instrument was given lodging at the University Observatory. This re-building in commemorated by a small plaque on an inside wall of the observatory.

The observatory in its original location, in 1891	Northern elevation	Observing the transit of Venus, 2004	... and with some extra help