St Cross College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1965, St Cross is an all-graduate college with gothic and traditional-style buildings on a central site in St Giles', just south of Pusey Street. It aims to match the structure, life and support of undergraduate colleges, with the relaxed atmosphere of an all-graduate college.
History
St Cross College was formally set up as a society by the University on 5 October 1965; it was to admit its first graduate students (five in number) in the following year. Like the majority of Oxford's newer colleges, St Cross has been co-educational since its foundation.
The early location of St Cross was on a site in , immediately south of St Cross Church. The college took its name from its proximity to these places. In 1976 negotiations began between the college and the members of Pusey House over the possibility of moving the college to the St Giles site. The negotiations were successful, and in 1981 the college moved from St Cross Road into a site owned by Pusey House for a leased period of 999 years. The old site on St Cross Road continued to be used, initially by the Centre for Islamic Studies (at that time an Associated Centre of the college), and then subsequently in the early 1990s the site was developed by the college in collaboration with Brasenose College. The site now houses two residential buildings, which were opened in 1996.
On 18 November 2010, it was announced that Sir Mark Jones, previously Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, had been elected as the next Master of the college; he took up the post in September 2011. Unlike every other college head (except the presidents of Kellogg and Reuben), the Master of St Cross is appointed not by the college's governing body but by the University Council. Therefore, the election has only the character of a recommendation to Council, albeit one which is constantly followed.
In May 2016, it was announced that the Fellows of St Cross College had elected Carole Souter, then chief executive of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Heritage Lottery Fund, as the next Master of the college. In September 2016, she succeeded Sir Mark Jones, who had been Master of St Cross since 2011. In June 2022 it was announced that Souter will retire in September 2022. In 2023, Kate Mavor was announced as the new master of the college, with effect from September 2023.
Buildings
The college is located on St Giles' near to the Ashmolean Museum, south of Regent's Park College and immediately north of Blackfriars, and faces St John's College. It is close to the Classics Faculty and the Oriental Institute.
The college buildings are structured around two quads, the Richard Blackwell Quadrangle and the new West Quad. St Cross shares the site with Pusey House, which comprises the first floor and parts of the ground floor to the eastern side of the Blackwell quad, a library on the first floor on its western side, as well as the chapel. The original Pusey House buildings around the Blackwell quad, including the chapel, date from the period of 1884 to 1926 and are mainly the work of the architects Temple and Leslie Moore and Ninian Comper. Discreet internal alterations were made when St Cross moved in by Geoffrey Beard and the Oxford Architects Partnership. Among these was the conversion of a cloister and store rooms into the Saugman Hall (now the Saugman Common Room) named after Per Saugman, a former Director of Blackwell Scientific Publications and a former fellow of the college. The first quadrangle was named the Richard Blackwell Quadrangle in honour of Richard Blackwell (another former fellow); both Saugman and Blackwell played a crucial part in securing the large Blackwell benefaction for St Cross. Most students, however, used to refer to the Richard Blackwell Quadrangle by its nickname: 'the Quad'. After completion of the second quad, it is now commonly known as 'the front Quad'.
At the west side of the Blackwell Quad lies the Four Colleges Arch, named after the four colleges which had contributed especially generous capital and recurrent funding to St Cross: Merton, All Souls, Christ Church, and St John's. Behind the Four Colleges Arch originally lay a large open garden bordered by medieval boundary wall. This offered the college the possibility of expanding its buildings and erecting a second quadrangle, the West Quad.