University University of Oxford Established c. 1854 | Location Parks Road Master William Henry Charsley | |
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Closed 1891, became Marcon's Hall (1891-1918) Named for William Henry Charsley (Master) | ||
Charsley's Hall was a Permanent Private Hall of the University of Oxford. After 1891 it was renamed as Marcon's Hall.
The hall was established under the University statute De Aulis Privatis, passed in 1854. This allowed any Master of Arts or other member of Convocation aged at least twenty-eight years to open a private hall after obtaining a licence to do so. The hall was in Parks Road, at the eastern corner of Museum Terrace, on the other side of the road from the Oxford University Museum, and was named after its master, William Henry Charsley, formerly of Christ Church. At the 1871 census, it contained nine residents.
Charsley's Hall had no published tuition fees, members electing their tutors and making their own arrangements for payment, but in general the terms were higher than elsewhere. Despite this, the hall was popular. One writer noted in 1883
Mr Charsley is the first master who has achieved any success as the head of such an institution. His hall, however, is the resort of a class of pupils who have, for the most part, larger means than those who enter the University avowedly as frugal students, the terms being somewhat high.
By 1889, migration to Charsley's was seen as a way of circumventing some requirements of the colleges, and its demise was prematurely foreseen by The Oxford Magazine.
... and yet if they, through lack of natural ability, fail to pass Mods, by a certain time, down they go and nothing is left them but to migrate to Charsley's Hall, itself perhaps to be abolished ere long. The life of a man at a private hall now-a-days is utterly different from that of a man at New Inn Hall as it used to be. Some of the restrictions (we hope Mr. Charsley will pardon us) are vexatious in the case of men residing at the Hall...
Charsley's Hall features several times in The Lay of the First Minstrel, a parody of Sir Walter Scott dating from the 1870s, beginning:
It was an Oxford Scholar bright,
(The sun shone fair on Charsley's Hall,)
And he would get him thoroughly tight,
For Gilbey'll still be lord of all...
In 1889–1890 Charsley's had forty-seven undergraduates, while Turrell's, the only other private hall, had seven. The Master, William Henry Charsley, appears to have kept a school for boys as well as a house of the university. This is suggested as a reason for matriculations at Charsley's at an unusually young age. By the end of 1891 the name of Charsley's had disappeared, as the mastership of the hall was taken over by Charles Abdy Marcon and it thus took his name as Marcon's Hall. Marcon had himself been educated at Charsley's.
In 1897 the only halls in the university were Marcon's, Turrell's, Grindle's, and St Edmund Hall. Marcon's continued under that name until C. A. Marcon retired in 1918.