Oxford Time

In search of a church to celebrate the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Birth of Jesus to Mary during my stay in Oxford, I ended up at Christ Church Cathedral. To my slight surprise, the ‘solemn eucharist’ for the Annunciation of our Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary turned out to start at 6:05, a curious time. ‘Oxford time, Sir,’ came the reply after I inquired with one of the clergymen about it.

‘Oxford time’, it turns out, is the local custom of starting some events five minutes after the scheduled time. It is a peculiar tradition of timekeeping in Oxford, applied particularly at and around the famous university. It is the local equivalent of the academic quarter. Lewis Carroll, an Oxonian, used Oxford time as inspiration for the perpetually late White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.

For a long time, it was common in various cities to use local solar time as the basis for timekeeping, which could lead to time differences between different cities within a single country. Time zones were not introduced until the 19th century. In the United Kingdom, mean solar time on the Greenwich meridian was established as the national standard. In traditional and idiosyncratic Oxford, however, they really wanted nothing to do with that Greenwich Mean Time.

Anyone visiting Christ Church Cathedral walks beneath Tom Tower, the tower housing Great Tom, the Oxford version of Big Ben. For three centuries, Great Tom has provided the distinctive background noise of life in Oxford. At 9:05 PM, Great Tom chimes 101 times, representing the college’s 100 original scholars, plus one added in 1663. This curfew announces the closing of the college gates. For students, it is a signal to go home.

The latter has not been true for a long time.