Tom Tower, Christ Church

The main entrance to Christ Church, from St Aldates, is Tom Gate, passing under Sir Christopher Wren’s distinctive Tom Tower, and leading into Tom Quad. All these are named after the bell, Old Tom, that hangs in the tower and rings 101 times each night at 9:05 to commemorate the original 101 students of ‘The House’, as Christ Church is called. Charles Dodgson would sometimes take his child friends up Tom Tower on the free-hanging wooden circular stairway to ring Old Tom with a tiny hammer.

Text extract and adapted, with permission, from Lewis Carroll’s England by Charlie Lovett.