are many references to the Eagle and Child in Letters and in the diaries of *Warren Lewis (Brothers and Friends). See also John Wain, ‘Push Bar to Open’, Oxford Magazine, Eighth Week, Hilary Term (1988). A photograph of the Eagle and Child is reproduced in The Inklings, p. 8b.
Eastgate Hotel. The Eastgate Hotel at 73 High Street was built in 1899–1900 and later enlarged. It is close to Magdalen College where *C.S. Lewis was a Fellow, and to Merton College, where Tolkien was Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 to 1959. For many years Tolkien and Lewis would meet in Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen on Monday morning, and then take a drink together in the Eastgate. It was often favoured by Tolkien for lunch or dinner when he had guests to entertain.
Examination Schools. Designed in a neo-Jacobean style by Thomas Graham Jackson and constructed in 1876–82, the Examination Schools in the High Street are used for lectures as well as examinations. Tolkien knew the ‘Schools’ as an undergraduate, and taught and examined in them as an Oxford professor. He gave most of his lectures in the Examination Schools, except during the Second World War when the building was used as a military hospital; the English Faculty Library, normally housed in the Schools, was then moved to the Taylor Institution and later to its new building in Manor Road.
Exeter College. Bounded by Turl Street, Broad Street, and Brasenose Lane, Exeter College was founded in 1314 as Stapeldon Hall by Walter de Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter. Most of its present architecture dates from the seventeenth century, notably the Hall built in 1618, or from the nineteenth century, including two Gothic Revival buildings by Sir George Gilbert Scott, the library (1855–6) and the chapel (1856–9). In the latter is a fine tapestry designed by Edward Burne-Jones and *William Morris. A photograph of Exeter College before the First World War is reproduced in Life and Legend, p. 24.
Tolkien won a Classical Exhibition to Exeter in December 1910 and came up to the College in Michaelmas Term 1911. His rooms until Trinity Term 1914 were in an Exeter building called Swiss Cottage (on the site of the present Blackwell’s art bookshop), which looked out on Turl Street – see his sketch Turl Street, Oxford in Artist and Illustrator, fig. 19, and his cover for an ‘Exeter College Smoker’ programme reproduced in Life and Legend, p. 26, and The Tolkien Family Album, p. 32. He usually had breakfast in his rooms, brought to him by his scout (college servant), and dinner in the Hall. In February 1913 he sent his fiancée (*Edith Tolkien) a postcard with a view of the Hall and an ‘X’ marking the spot where he usually sat: see Life and Legend, p. 35. He had to pay weekly for any food and drink brought to his room. Surviving battels (re-used by Tolkien for notes) show that he was charged for tea, coffee, milk and cream, sugar, dry toast, butter, jam, marmalade and honey, anchovy and buttered toast, cakes, crumpets and muffins, porridge, eggs, fruit, potted meat and pickles, sardines, chutney and sauce, cider and claret cup and mulled claret, and lemon squash, as well as tobacco and cigarettes.
Tolkien was active in College life, joining inter alia the Exeter College Essay Club and the Stapeldon Society (*Societies and clubs), in both of which he held office. He was a member of the committee appointed by the Stapeldon Society to organize the elaborate dinner held 6 June 1914 at which the Junior Common Room entertained the Senior Common Room to celebrate the Sexcentenary of the College’s foundation. He also often attended social events such as concerts and the annual Freshman’s Wine. For part of his time at Oxford he played on the Exeter College rugby team; see photograph, Life and Legend, p. 25. From Hilary Term 1919 until Trinity Term 1920, while he was working in Oxford after the war, Tolkien was an honorary member of the Essay Club, to whom he read The Fall of Gondolin (*The Book of Lost Tales) on 10 March 1920. At a meeting of the Club in November 1926, after his return to Oxford from *Leeds, Tolkien read a paper on the Elder Edda.
On 26 July 1933 Tolkien and *Hugo Dyson invited C.S. Lewis and his brother Warren to dine at Exeter College. Warren Lewis on that occasion described the college as ‘a delightful place, the chief feature being the garden – a quiet oblong of close shaven, walled and treed fringed grass, ending in a little paved court with a sunk pond where a small fountain plays on water lilies: this court is overlooked from a terrace or rampart which is approached by a flight of stone steps from the lawn.’ From the terrace Lewis found ‘a most unusual view of Oxford: the terrace is perhaps fifteen feet above the square in which the Bodleian stands … it looked wonderfully dignified, backed by St Mary’s and a pale yellow afterglow of sunset’ (Brothers and Friends, pp. 105–6).
Tolkien retained an affection for Exeter College, though as a professor he was later attached to Pembroke and Merton colleges. His daughter *Priscilla remembered a ‘conflict of loyalties’ one year during the annual college Boat Races, ‘when Exeter were rowing against Pembroke: whilst having tea with us … on the Pembroke [spectators’] barge, he shouted for their opponents!’ (The Tolkien Family Album, p. 77).
Exeter College made Tolkien an honorary fellow in 1958.
According to J.R.L. Maddicott in the booklet Exeter College, Oxford (published by the college c. 1990), Tolkien has eclipsed the Exeter authors that went before, even William Morris. ‘It is safe to say that his later books have been more widely read than those of all the Exeter men since the fourteenth century and that he has almost certainly given more pleasure to more people than any other single member of the College’ (p. 22). Not all of the biographical details given for Tolkien in the booklet are correct, however, and later investigation refuted the attribution to Tolkien of a suggestion left in the Junior Common Room that ‘a good English dictionary’ be purchased for that space.
See further, John Garth, ‘Tolkien, Exeter College and the Great War’, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration (2008); Frances Cairncross, ed., Exeter College: The First 700 Years (2013); and John Garth, Tolkien and Exeter College (2014). The latter reproduces a previously unpublished sketch by Tolkien of Exeter College Hall, as well as one of Broad Street in Oxford, and several previously unpublished photographs of Tolkien as an undergraduate.
King’s Arms. A public house at 41 Holywell Street, opened in 1607. Most of the present building dates from the eighteenth century. It is close to the Bodleian Library, and therefore much used by readers and employees. On 22 August 1944 Tolkien wrote to his son *Christopher: ‘This morning I … found the Bird and Baby [Eagle and Child] closed; but was hailed in a voice that carried across the torrent of vehicles that was once St Giles’, and discovered the two Lewises [C.S. and W.H.] and *C[harles] Williams, high and very dry on the other side. Eventually we got 4 pints of passable ale at the King’s Arms – at a cost of 5/8’ (Letters, p. 92). *Roger Lancelyn Green recalled that during one summer, c. 1949–50, he ‘was doing research work in the Bodleian and would meet C.S. Lewis … and he would say in a conspiratorial whisper “King’s Arms! 12.30!” and we would meet there for a drink and a talk in the yard behind the hotel. There Tolkien usually joined us, and frequently Hugo Dyson, plus occasionally others of the “Inklings”’ (‘Recollections’, Amon Hen 44 (May 1980), pp. 7–8).
Lady Margaret Hall. Founded in 1878 to accommodate women desiring to study at Oxford, Lady Margaret Hall was named after Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII and a patron of learning. Its buildings range from the original grey brick villa built in 1879 (extended in 1881) to a neo-Georgian block by Raymond Firth, constructed 1963–6. Gardens stretch east to the Cherwell. During Tolkien’s day Lady Margaret Hall was one of five women’s colleges in Oxford (men began to be admitted in 1979), and according to his daughter Priscilla, an undergraduate there between 1948 and 1951, ‘probably the one he knew best’ (‘Memories of J.R.R. Tolkien in His Centenary Year’, The Brown Book (December 1992), p. 12).
Lamb and Flag. A public house at 12 St Giles’, almost opposite the Eagle and Child, opened towards the end of the seventeenth century. Some of
