Talk:St Edmund Hall, Oxford

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thought I should point out that the link to William Taylor doesn't actually go to the right william taylor!!

Contents 1 Date of Establishment 2 Hall's Seniority 3 Scarf Colours 4 Userbox Template 5 Notable Alumni 6 Classification

[edit] Date of Establishment

Firstly, Teddy Hall was "established" and not "founded" in the 13th century. Halls were never "founded", which in Oxford explicitly means set up with statutes as an endowment, something only Colleges had. Secondly, there is already a line in the very next paragraph talking about it becoming a college in 1957. This does not need to be repeated in the establishment paragraph.

[edit] Hall's Seniority

Although there is some debate over which is the oldest college at Oxford (Balliol, Merton, and Univ or say they are), there is no debate over what is the oldest academic institution at Oxford or the oldest undergraduate institution in the English-speaking world. It is Teddy Hall.

The colleges were originally purely graduate institutions, and the Medieval Halls were purely undergraduate institutions. This is why the two types of institutions co-existed. The Halls began to disappear after the colleges began accepting undergrads, centuries after Teddy Hall came into being.

Also, Teddy Hall was unquestionably in operation as a Hall before the colleges, a fact that even all three of the colleges above acknowledge when asserting their claim to collegiate seniority. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aularian (talk • contribs) 00:42, 24 April 2006

Was Teddy Hall the first Hall? That's the impression given by the text. Given that most Colleges started as amalgamations of Halls, it's at best a technicality to say that Teddy Hall is the oldest institution, unless it is the first Hall — and again, I know of no reason to believe that.

I've changed the reference to an on-line one for ease of checking, and given the (more cautious) claim found therein. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:15, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I have now obtained through ILL a copy of Emden's (1927) work from which Cowdrey derived his statement. This venerable book also came adorned with an October 1934 newspaper cutting describing the completion of the quad in time for the 700th anniversary and also a signed, hand written note by Emden to a certain Lamborne, apologising for missing and arranged meeting in 'Philistia'. Emden concludes his work on page 236 by stating:

"... and St. Edmund Hall now survives as the last lineal descendent of the oldest form of academical society designed for the residence of scholars studying in the Oxford Schools."

Subtle differences here but it shows that Cowdrey's quote is somewhat paraphrased. I would like to therefore remove the quotation marks from the opening paragraph and reference them through the existing footnote to the exact text recognising Cowdrey's later referral. Now to support the claim of the Hall's seniority in the world of universities requires some additional supporting references. Floreat aula. Hutch 18:46, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scarf Colours

Yet again I have had to revert an incorrect change to the scarf colours. The college's colours are "Claret and Cream", look at your scarf it is not red and yellow. I suggest you look at Shepherd and Woodward's site if you require confirmation. Granted a lot of the Hall's sporting gear is red and yellow but that's largely because it's much easier/cheaper to produce. Never the less it is still incorrect. I don't know why some people are so keen on continually changing it. AulaTPN 22:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

With all respect, the picture on the Shepherd and Woodward's site is not the best quality. College colours are indeed maroon and gold. To quote from the college website: "Scarf - Maroon/gold striped wool with embroidered crest."; gold is substituted with yellow, as, for example, on University's scarf. The scarf I currently have (and it's a Shepherd's and Woodward's one, too) certainly has yellow on it. I will set the colours to yellow again, and I really hope this does not become an edit war over a fairly insubstantial piece of information.--AVIosad^(talk) 23:47, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok I'm not trying to start a flame-war over this but I'm afraid that's not historically correct. College colours in older literature were stated as claret & cream so maroon and gold is a newer (con/in)vention. That being said I really wish you wouldn't go changing the colours back - the yellow just looks plain wrong when you compare it to the pale gold on the college tie or the cream on the older scarves. In fact it looks like nothing so much as Boston College (with whom the College has a long-standing relationship) colours and I think that's misleading. Also using the college's memorabillia as justification is not sound - it was well regarded when I was at the Hall that all that stuff was very low in quality and certainly overused the yellow - in fact many contemporaries jokingly considered it to be 'knock-off gear' when compared to the official S&W products. I have to say that I strongly disagree with your edits, particularly those to the colours section in the article and my instinct is to revert them all. Having said that I'm not a fan of unilateral action and would prefer a debate amongst other Oxonian/Aularian Wiki users first. Let's give it two weeks for a reasonable debate - although I'd still prefer to revert your edits while we wait. In the meantime I will take some pictures of official, licenced college merchandise to support my viewpoint. AulaTPN 07:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I can revert my own changes if you want. However, as the things currently stand, most students regard "maroon and gold" as college colours (I am a current student myself, have never heard "claret and cream", and to me it just seems wrong), whereas college gear (again, at the moment) is pretty high quality; in any case, I thought that the college web-site would be a better source for "official" college colours. As for the S&W stuff, the photo is really not particularly good in terms of colours: if you can make better ones that'd be great (although if it is from your days at college, colours, particularly yellow, tend to fade. A quick google check, unfortunately, yields nothing by way of supporting any of our views.--AVIosad^(talk) 11:46, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Chaps, as an interested party to this debate, please could I add my 2d worth. I include with this note a scan of my scarf and tie which although greater than 20 years old have not spent all that time fading in the sun - the tie gets worn mainly in the evening and the scarf when the sun doesn’t tend to shine too much! Their colours are very much as I remember them.

Now I understand that a JPEG compression of an un-calibrated scan is not definitive (and I intend to include in the scan a ‘Maunsell Color Chart’ to attempt this) but the colour of the stripe is not a golden yellow. Neither is it ‘cream’ and if my cream was this colour, I would hesitate to pour it over my strawberries! I recall well that rugger-buggers and other hearties would wear sporting garb of a somewhat brighter hue than that wrapped around our necks. So which is correct? May I suggest that some suitable Aularian authority provide the appropriate Pantone numbers – BTW they were known as blood and custard in my day. Hutch 16:40, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I now have half a mind (possibly even three quarters a mind) to ask the porters or the bursary people to resolve the argument. Saying that, I probably chose too bright a colour for the scarf; but in this case so have everyone else on the scarves page, as it always seemed to me the yellow on the Hall scarf is identical to the yellow on, for example, Univ ones. I would also like to note that there might turn to be a difference between "College colours" and the colours on the scarf. --AVIosad^(talk) 17:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Don't ask them - they've probably consumed far too much port by now..! Anyway, below is a photo of my own college scarf shot under studio-daylight conditions, It's 10 years old and hasn't faded at all as far as I can see. I don't have my pantone chart to hand - must be at work - but the 'cream' is definitely not yellow. I suppose it's actually a sort of buff/tan colour rather than cream - I'll stroll around the pantone section for an official colour but the colour I chose for the college scarf in the info box was #E5CAAC which gives:

which, although not perfect, is much, much closer than yellow. Oh and as a former rugger-bugger I can confirm that my rugby shirt is a much gaudier colour, which is remarkable as most of them were so abused with mud and Ariel that then tended to turn bright pink and yellow! I would have said ask Dr Collins as he's a mine of college history and information but sadly he's just retired! (in the interest of fairness I should point out that when I hold my scarf up to the screen the colour of the stripes is about halfway between the colours represented in my photo and Oxonhutch's photo) AulaTPN 19:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

In fact, having just looked at Buff I'd like to propose that we use buff (#F0DC82) as the 'official' colour for the stripes thus giving (by Wiki's definition of buff)

what do people think? I'm also not sure that the red is the correct colour - on comparison it doesn't seem to have enough purple. AulaTPN 20:05, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that looks much, much closer. Let's use this for the scarf. However, I still think that as far as the college colour section goes, we should decide which of the three versions to give weight (I'd still say gold is the second colour, particularly as it's the colour on the crest). As for the sports kit, as a rower (a cox) I can confirm the prevalence of dark red-bright yellow on current versions : ). --AVIosad^(talk) 20:47, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Why not use the section as a chance to highlight the ambiguity and state all the popular combos - claret & cream, maroon & gold and even blood & custard (I must admit I quite like that one!). You could solve the problem of which to give weight to by saying pale gold? I'm just thinking that if you look at items which actually use, gold such as the S&W ties, it's almost a champagne-gold colour. As for the red, Maroon seems to be the closest on the wiki colour charts. So, maroon and pale gold or is that just being pedantic? Also I think it would be fun to highlight the differences by adding pictures of different college apparel - an S&W tie & scarf, a rugby shirt, a zephyr and so on. I can supply better pictures of the scarf and rugby shirt. AulaTPN 21:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there is a need for saying that "the consensus is maroon and pale gold", but a discussion of the changes in the names of the colours would be interesting. One problem with listing all the options is that we unfortunately have no sources to support it, and that's original research - sad, but true. Can you think of a way to solve this? --AVIosad^(talk) 18:47, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Aula, I think that your photograph may have an overly blue cast to it which is knocking back the yellowness of your stripes. There are background parts to your photo which look distinctly blue and which I suspect are actually white. A little experiment in PhotoStudio 5.0 to ‘correct’ this hue created stripes very similar in colour to mine. Could I suggest you try scanning the scarf as I did to mine and see if the resultant image is noticeably different. Best regards Hutch 12:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. Like I said, I noticed the blue-hue (due to the studio's daylight lamps I suspect) and played with correcting the colour balance. When I did that the yellow came out halfway between the pic I uploaded and your pic and almost spot on with the buff colour sample. AulaTPN 13:46, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm assuming we've at least resolved the scarf colour debate, if not the debate over nomenclature, so I'll change the article and Academic Scarf accordingly. AulaTPN 14:30, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Userbox Template

I have created a quick Userbox template and associated categories so that Aularian Wikipedians can add this to their user pages. Use template: {{User:AulaTPN/User Aularian}}. AulaTPN 20:03, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

As per the userbox migration policy, I have moved the userbox to User:AulaTPN/User Aularian. AulaTPN 11:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notable Alumni

Another user added St Edmund to the list of notable former students. Now I'm going to display a shocking lack of knowledge by asking - we know he was a Master but was he ever actually a student at the Hall? I've not heard anything to that effect, ever so I have removed the link. I'll check the books by Paris & Emden and come back to this. In the mean time, if you can provide a concrete reference attesting to this then please feel free to revert my edit and add the reference. AulaTPN 00:19, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Classification

Right, in an effort to start classifying the articles in the project I've assigned a preliminary rating of B and a Top importance, here's why. Arguably, the collegiate system is one of the most fundamental parts of the distinctive oxford experience and so I would like to make the case that no encyclopaedic entry would be complete without detailing the various colleges and permanent private halls. With that in mind I would also like to nominate all college/pph entries as being of Top importance to the project. As far as standard goes, I think the article as is provides an excellent summary of the college history and purpose within the context of the university. I don't think we can improve the article without a much more detailed history and better quality images. That being said, if anyone deems different classifications more appropriate then please go ahead. AulaTPN 13:31, 26 March 2007 (UTC)