Why go
Knowing this gradual origin changes how you read the centre: early teaching preceded the college buildings, and colleges emerged as a response to how scholars lived and worked. University College, Balliol and Merton illustrate different strands of that early development.
The full story
Teaching at Oxford is documented by 1096, but there is no known founding ceremony for the university. Its community grew particularly after English scholars returned from Paris in the later twelfth century. The masters were recognised as a corporation in the thirteenth century, and a royal charter followed in 1248. Relations with the town were sometimes strained. After a dispute in 1209, some scholars left Oxford for Cambridge, a reminder that the university’s shape was still unsettled. Students first lived in a mixture of halls, lodgings and religious houses. Religious orders established their own Oxford communities, while benefactors began founding colleges as more lasting places to live and study. University College was endowed by William of Durham, Balliol took its name from John Balliol, and Walter de Merton’s rules for Merton College became influential beyond Oxford. These histories help explain why the university remains a group of distinct colleges rather than one continuous campus. The streets between colleges are part of the story: scholars developed their institutions within an existing town, not on empty ground.