Lane.
It survives, almost unaltered, from Pre-Reformation Oxford, and,
winding as it does its narrow way between high walls, it is an
interesting specimen of the "lanes" which threaded mediaeval Oxford,
a city in which the High Street and, to a smaller extent, Cornmarket
Street were the only real thoroughfares; the rest of the city was a
network of narrow ways.

But from the historic point of view, the most interesting part of the
picture is its right side, where stand the buildings of St. Edmund
Hall. This is the only survival of the system of residence in the
earliest University, of the Oxford which knew not the college system.

Before the days of "pious founders," the students had to provide
their own places of residence, and very early the custom grew up of
their living together in "halls," sometimes managed by a non-academic
owner, but often under the superintendence of some resident Master of
Arts, who was responsible, not for the teaching, but, at any rate in
part, for the discipline of the inmates of his hall. These halls had
at first no endowments and no permanent existence; they depended for
their continuity on the person of their head. Gradually they became
more organized; but when once the college system had been introduced,
it tended, by its superior wealth and efficiency, to render the
"halls" less and less important. They lost even the one element of
self-government which they had once had, the right of their members
to elect their own Principal; this right was usurped by the
Chancellor. Hence, though five of the halls were surviving at the
time of the University Commission (of 1850), all of them but St.
Edmund Hall have now disappeared.

In theory, "hall" and "college" have much in common; one Cambridge
college indeed has retained the name of "hall," and two of the
women's colleges in Oxford have preferred to keep the old style. In
practice, their difference lies in the two facts that colleges are
wealthier, with more endowments, and that they are self-governing,
with Fellows who co-opt to vacancies in their own body and elect
their head. St. Edmund Hall has its head appointed by the fellows of
Queen's, with which institution it has long been connected.

[Plate XXV. St. Peter-in-the-East Church and St. Edmund Hall]

The origin of this hall is an unsolved problem: it derives its name
according to one theory from Edmund Rich, the last Archbishop of
Canterbury to be canonized, and probably the first