St. John's College Oxford, Canterbury Quad

St John’s College was founded in 1555 by Sir Thomas White when he bought the premises of the former St Bernard’s College and the ground to the east of it. It was the first Oxford college to be founded by a merchant rather than a churchman. Canterbury Quad was financed by William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury and was built in the 1630‘s on the former garden. It is slightly out of alignment with the Front Quad so as not to block the east window of the chapel. The south range incorporates the originally free standing 16th century library. The Quad is entered from the Front Quad under a miniature stone fan vault. The north and south ranges are conventional examples of 16th and 17th century collegiate architecture with two-light windows and doorways and a crenellated roofline. The surfaces are enlivened with splendid rainwater heads and carvings of grotesque beasts. The east and west fronts are made up of arcades of round arches on Tuscan columns supporting an upper floor lit by gothic windows.On the first floor, housed in lavish niches with carved lions and unicorns, are bronze statues of King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria cast by Hubert le Sueur.