The Great Tower

The Great Tower of Magdalen College is 144 feet tall, and it has a properly medieval key: a long, heavy iron key that turns a huge lock in the massive wooden door. Once you enter the Tower, you must unlock another door leading to the spiral staircase, so narrow that you must climb it single-file. About 150 steps up you reach a ladder, and at the end of that ladder is a wooden door that opens onto the top of the Tower. And there you are: far above Oxford's streets and spires, gazing down on meadows, gardens, shops, and college quads. No rain in our faces on this day; the sky was bright blue and the sun shone on the green fields below.

To climb the Great Tower, you must go with a Magdalen student who has climbed the Tower before, and who has a signed form allowing him to obtain the key from the college porter. We went up with Chris, a Magdalen student who first went up with his friend James. I don't know who taught James to climb the Tower, but Magdalen students have been showing each other up this Tower for hundreds of years.

Beneath our feet the Magdalen bells were ringing. Every year on May 1st at sunrise, the college choir assembles at the top and sings to welcome the May. (Then, according to tradition, students who've watched the ceremony jump off Magdalen bridge into the Cherwell, which they're technically not allowed to do, but they do anyway.)

I want to come back next May.