Abbot's Kitchen

This building, called the Abbot's Kitchen is part of the Department of Chemistry at Oxford (my own department). It is used now as a seminar room, and, indeed, as a social centre, thus linking it back to similar monastic buildings (see later).

The building of 1860 was one of the first purpose-built chemical laboratories anywhere in the world, and as a consequence Chemistry was seen to be a truly separate discipline.

The laboratory is a remarkable small octagonal structure beside the museum, built in Victorian Gothic style deliberately designed on the Abbot's Kitchen at Glastonbury.

I have a Blipfoto entry for 23 August 2010, when we visited Fontevraud Abbey. I provided a link there to a photograph I took of their Abbot's Kitchen, and you can see a clear family resemblance. (But I have to say that real Gothic beats mock Gothic, and the real one is happily devoid of parked cars and skips!)