Queen’s Lane
Photograph by William Henry Fox Talbot showing Queen's Lane in c.1840
Queen’s Lane runs starts in the High Street, with The Queen’s College (founded in 1341) to the west and Queen’s Lane Coffee House to the east. It lay in the parish of St Peter-in-the-East, and was just inside the city wall, and the square tower of that former church (now the library of St Edmund Hall) can be seen in the above photograph.
Queen's Lane tthen turns left to run along the north side of The Queen's College and the south side of New College, and then it makes a sharp turn to the right to meet New College Lane (which runs eastwards from the top of Catte Street just within the city wall and then turns right down to New College barn, and then left to to the original main lodge of New College. It then turns right under an archway spanning the road, where bollards now prevents these two roads being used as a through-route by traffic.
Former names of Queen's Lane
St Edmund Hall Lane
In the eighteenth century this road was called St Edmund Hall Lane, after the university hall (now a full college) that had been founded by 1317 and was originally overseen by Queen's. (St Edmund Hall is set back on the right in the above photograph and cannot be seen.)
Torald Street (also Thorald or Turold Street)
This name had already disappeared when Anthony Wood was writing in the seventeenth century. Peter Torald or Thorald (d.1257) was Mayor of Oxford in the 1230s and 1240s. He owned Thorald Hall, which ended up enclosed in New College along with the north part of Thorald Street, which then ran up to a postern in the north city wall. Wood writes in The Antient and Present State of the City of Oxford:
Near that [a very rough area within the city wall, now part of New College] was Thorald, or Turold Street, so called from a Name divers Time Mayor of Oxon, living a few Years in Oxon after the Norman Conquest, and Benefactor to the Church. Of its Situation, it is partly mentioned in St. Frid.'s Book, i.e. in the Charter of Hamon de Rading; whereby he giveth to St. Frid.'s Priory, situated in Vico qui vocatur Vicus Toraldi Allutarii versus S. Petr. By which I guess it to be the same Street, sometimes leading from a Postern in the North Wall of the City, athwart Hammer Hall Lane, by the Place where N.C. [New College] non licet Gate now is; and from thence under the West End of St. Peter's Church, and so by Queen's College and Edmund Hall to the High Street. Herein also was sometimes Thorald Hall, a very ancient Place, and belonging always to Osney Abbey, in one of whose Rentals, 7 Ed. II. I find this inserted—Haeredibus Henge pro Domo Marcelli, et eidem Henge de Aula Toraldi in eadem Parochia, i.e. St. Peter's of the East. There were here within the said Limites of N.C. several broken PIeces of Ground, where the Rubbish and Carrion of the City was conveyed; as also Two or Three Alleys or Entrances leading from one Hall to another
