OXFORD IN FICTION: Top Six Fictional Colleges (Updated July 4, 2018)

Morse, Lewis, Endeavour...

Which Oxford colleges are most often models for fictional colleges?

Two ground rules: 

First, exclude colleges used as sets for stories about schools (e.g., Hogwart's) or estates (e.g., Downton Abbey).

Second, exclude real colleges referred to in fiction, as when Jay Gatsby claimed that he went to Trinity College after the Great War. (His character's attendance was fictional, his purported alma mater is not.)

Based on these rules, my nominees for the top six real colleges used as models for fictional Oxford colleges are...:

Christ Church - 7
Oriel - 4
Balliol - 3
Brasenose - 3
LMH - 3
New - 3

The tabulation is below. Let me know of sites that might qualify and have been left out and I will reconsider and if necessary re-compute with credit to you if you want it.

College (or Hall)	Fictional College
All Souls	All Saints College - North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.
Balliol (3)	Baillie College – Yes Ministerand Yes, Prime Minister, attended by two consecutive cabinet secretaries.
	Scone College- Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh; Something Nasty in the Woodshedand The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery by Kyril Bonfiglioli. (John de Balliol was crowned King of Scotland at Scone in 1292 and ruled for four years.)
	Biblioll College Jude the Obscure
Brasenose(3)	Brazenface College – Verdant Green by Cuthbert Bede.
	Lonsdale College – Inspector Morse novels and subsequent Lewis TV series filmed there.
	Mayfield College –Lewis episode "Life Born of Fire” filmed there. Could also be Greyfriars, former Permanent Private Hall, nearest to “Mayfield” Press.
Christ Church (7)	Anonymous college in A Staircase in Surrey, a series of five novels by J. I. M. Stewart.
	Cardinal College – A Yank at Oxford.Cardinal College is the original name that Cardinal Wolsey gave to Christ Church in 1525.
	Cardinal's College - Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials
	Clapperton College - The Oxford Virusby Adam Kolczynski.
	St Thomas's College - An Oxford Tragedy and The Case of the Four Friends by John Cecil Masterman. St Thomas the Martyr's Church is located near Osney. Christ Church owns the church.
	Cardinal College Jude the Obscure
	Wolsey College - Inspector Morse novels and Endeavour. Cardinal Wolsey founded Christ Church.
Corpus Christi	Foxe College - Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Corpus was founded by Richard Foxe.
Exeter (3)	Carlyle College - Lewis, episode "The Soul of Genius" filmed there.
	Jordan College - Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials
	Plymouth College - North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.
Jesus	St Michael's College -  Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials
Keble (2)	Baidley College -Endeavour TV series; "Home", the last episode of the first season filmed there.
	Tresingham College - The Oxford Virusby Adam Kolczynski.
Lincoln	Gresham College - Lewis,episode "Dark Matter". The "Invisible College", a group of Oxford scientists (including Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke and Christopher Wren) that went on to establish the Royal Society. met at Gresham College in London.
LMH (3)	Lady Matilda's College -Lewis. Based on and filmed in Lady Margaret Hall.
	St Margaret's College - Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones. Probably based on Lady Margaret Hall.
	St Sophia's College - Based on Lady Margaret Hall. PP
Magdalen	St Mary's College – Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (who attended Magdalen).
Merton (2)	Chaucer College – Lewis. Named after Geoffrey Chaucer.
	Judas College – Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm.
New College (3)	St Saviour's College –Inspector Morse, episode "Fat Chance" filmed there.
	Wykeham College – Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. New College was founded by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester.
	St Gerard's Hall – Lewis episode "Wild Justice"; fictional Permanent Private Hall. Filmed here, and also at SEH and Christ Church.
Oriel (4)	Bartlemas College – Kate Ivory detective novels by Veronica Stallwood. Oriel's property includes St Bartholomew's Chapel.
	Courtenay College – Inspector Morse TV series. Nuneham Courtenay is a village 5 miles south-east of Oxford. Nuneham House now belongs to the University.
	St Ambrose's College - Tom Brown at Oxford by Thomas Hughes. Oriel was both film location and the probable location of the college based, for example, on the boat race in 1842.
	The King's College (known as "Dick's" after alleged founder Richard II) - Colonel Butler's Wolf and Our Man in Camelot by Anthony Price.
Queen’s	Queen Philippa's College - Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Queen's College was founded in honor of Queen Philippa of Hainault.
Somerville(2)	St Jerome's College - Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton. The Reluctant Cannibals by Ian Flitcroft.
	Shrewsbury College - Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night.
St Benet’s Hall	St Scholastica's College - Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials. Scholastica was the sister of St Benedict (Benet).
St Catherine’s	St Katherine’s – Virginia Woolf, The Pargiters
St Peter’s	St Mary’s College - Tony Strong, The Poison Tree.
St. Hilda’s	Bede College - Operation Pax by Michael Innes, nom-de-plume of J. I. M. Stewart. (St Bede wrote about St Hilda.)
Trinity (2)	Savile College – Lewis.
	Oriel College – Tom Brown at Oxford by Thomas Hughes. Under current computation rules, Gatsby doesn't count.
Wadham	Gabriel College – Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials.

OXFORD: NY Times Travel Story

Trinity College Dining Hall High Table. Behind are
Portraits of Its Founder and Distinguished Alumni.

March 23, 2014–The story in the NY Times Travel section today about Oxford brings back great memories. It is written by the wife of a law professor on a sabbatical year in Oxford. She has a good sense of some of Oxford's attractions and picks a few highlights of cultural offerings in the city.

She starts with references to "Brideshead Revisited" and Christ Church and Inspector Morse, and continues with a selection of recent Oxford writers.

She recommends starting a visit with a view from the top of St. Mary the Virgin, "right smack dab in the middle of the action" on High Street. The NY Times photographer dutifully takes a photo of the "dreaming spires" from that location.

It's a fine horseback trip around Oxford, but I have a couple of quibbles as someone who spent two magical years at Trinity College.

First, the "middle" of Oxford for me was always Broad Street, "the Broad"–where the Bodleian and Sheldonian are, the Museum of the History of Science, Blackwell's multiple stores, the Tourist Information Center, and the blue gates of Trinity College, where for more than a quarter-century the Blue Badge Guild of Oxford Guides walking tours begin. (For access online to a huge range of tailored tours of Oxford, on foot or with transport, go here or here.)

The Broad was on the fringe of the original Oxford, and Trinity was outside the wall around Oxford that survives in parts on the opposite side of the Broad from Trinity. But scholars were residing at Trinity's predecessor college before 1291.

Second, the map that accompanies the story shows the college next door to Trinity at one end of the Broad and the Bodleian at the other, but not Trinity College. Trinity is important not just because Guild tours begin at its blue gates. It may be a small college in numbers. But it has a jewel of a chapel and for an American audience, Trinity alumni punch well above their weight:

• Pitt the Elder helped get the French out (hurray!) and 
• Lord North tried to get the colonies to pay for this (boo!); between them they had a lot to do with the American Revolution. 
• Wilmington, Del. was named after Lord Wilmington, Britain's second Prime Minister and another Trinity alum. 
• Three men of the Calvert family created Maryland. All attended Trinity–the first and second Lords Baltimore who claimed Maryland for Catholics, and the younger-brother Calvert who became Maryland's first Governor.
• Viscount James Bryce was the British Ambassador to the United States in 1907-1913, in the run-up to World War I and he had something to do with getting the United States into the war "Over There".  
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, looking for an Oxford college for Gatsby to claim to have attended, picked Trinity. However, Gatsby doesn't show up on a list of Trinity alums.
• Boat Race followers might like to know that two of the eight oarsmen on the Oxford crew this year are from Trinity College.