Buildings The main buildings on the main college site are the Front Quad, the West Building, the
MBI Al Jaber Auditorium, the Fellows' Building, Gentleman-Commoners' Quad and Thomas Quad. The Front Quad was built for the college's foundation and designed in an archetypal Oxford college style, with a tower over the main gate. The quad was constructed by distinguished builders associated with Henry VIII's Office of Work: master mason
William Vertue, master mason William East and carpenter Humphrey Coke (Warden of the
Carpenter's Company in London). The quad's architecture later inspired that of
Oglethorpe University. Although by then considered heavily antiquated, in 1625 battlements were added to make the effect more complete and akin to other colleges. The chapel adjoins the library and is just off the Front Quad. Its location is unusual: many colleges (even small ones) had their chapel in their main quad, with some colleges placing them on the first floor to fit them in (e.g. Lincoln and Brasenose). Its lectern is one of the first bronze eagle lecterns in Oxford; it is the only pre-Reformation one and was a gift of the first president. The chapel's
altarpiece is a copy of Ruben's Adoration of the Shepherds, a gift from the antiquarian
Sir Richard Worsley. Later buildings on the main site include the Fellows' Building of 1706–1716, the Gentlemen Commoners' Building of 1737 and the Emily Thomas Building, designed by
T.H. Hughes, of 1928. On the corner of
Merton Street and
Magpie Lane, lie the Jackson and Oldham buildings and Kybald Twychen, which all house students. In 1884–85, the architect
T. G. Jackson had first installed a 'New Building and Annexe', replacing town houses on Magpie Lane. In 1969, this work was trimmed and modified to make space for a further new building created by
Philip Powell and
Hidalgo Moya using a modernist
beehive design, while leaving Jackson's Annexe substantially intact. Powell and Moya's building uses local limestone rubble and has the architects' characteristically large windows mounted within an exposed concrete frame. Particular attention was paid to placing the design within the existing architectural context, including the plain wall of Oriel College, Merton's
Gothic chapel and Jackson's heavily ornamented Annexe. In 2017, the New Building and Annexe were substantially renovated and renamed the Oldham and Jackson Buildings, respectively. Corpus also owns several buildings further afield: the Liddell Building on
Iffley Road (built with Christ Church in 1991), and houses on
Banbury Road.
Library The college library was "probably, when completed, the largest and best furnished library then in Europe". The scholar
Erasmus noted in a letter of 1519 to the first President,
John Claymond, that it was a library "
inter praecipua decora Britanniae" ("among the chief beauties of Britain"), and praised it as a "
biblioteca trilinguis" ("trilingual library") containing, as it did, books in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. The library windows in the front quad are framed by seven
bamboo plants. Two copies of the Pelican Sundial exist in America. The first, the Mather Sundial in
Princeton University, was commissioned by
William Mather as a goodwill gesture between the United Kingdom to the United States. The second is on the front lawn of
Pomfret School in Connecticut and was donated in 1912 by the father of a graduating student.
Gardens Aspects of the evolution of the college's ornamental gardens (Grade II listed) have been documented since the late 16th century. By the turn of the 19th century, a series of strict, geometrical layouts had given way to more informal features, including a lawn in the main garden, bordered by a dense shrubbery. Described as
'wild' gardens, the stated aim is to blend a "range of wild and cultivated flowers into a vivid yet harmonious landscape." Attention to detail marks even the most intimate of spaces, such as those around the 'small garden' linking the front quad to the main garden at the back of the college. The main garden is flanked on one side by the distinctive
neoclassical architecture of the Fellows' Building, which is exuberantly bordered by ornamental shrubs and
perennials, overseen by climbing roses and wisteria. Across the lawn, a bank shaded by a dominant
copper beech leads up to a vantage point on the old
Oxford city wall (above
Dead Man's Walk), where a line of three
lime trees traces the course of a terraced avenue that was originally raised in 1623. The views from here across
Christ Church Meadow and into the gardens of neighbouring colleges suggest a "pleasant gardening outpost." The style of gardening is, in Leake's words, "much less formal than [in] most other colleges, but sympathetic to the atmosphere." Examples of
exotic plants that have been
cultivated include
Campsis radicans (trumpet vine),
Dracunculus vulgaris (dragon lily),
Gunnera manicata (Brazilian giant-rhubarb),
Philadelphus microphyllus (littleleaf mock-orange), and
Zantedeschia aethiopica (arum lily). Trees include a
Wollemi pine (a species rediscovered in Australia in 1994) and
quince (whose fruit is given to college fellows and friends). The greenhouse was designed by
Rick Mather, the creator of the college's auditorium. Almost frameless, it presents itself as a display cabinet in which a variety of
horticultural and other informal exhibits are watched over by a surreally attired
mannequin named Madame Lulu. ==Coat of arms and other symbols==