Merton College details

“It appears that [Queen’s College] was also anxious to pull down the chamber of King Henry V. This is a strange craze for destruction, that some time ago endangered the beautiful library of Merton, a place wheer one can fancy that Chaucer of Wyclif may have studied. Oxford will soon have little left of the beauty and antiquity of Patey’s Quad in Merton, as represented in our illustration. What the next generation will think of the multitudinous new buildings, it is not hard to conjectiore. Imitative experiments, without style or fancy in structure or decoration, and often more than mediævally uncomfortable, they will seem but evidences of Oxford’s love of destruction.” (p. 184. )