Tour Price: £9/person
Tour Time: 2 hours. Flexible Start
Meeting Point: Oxford Gloucester Green Bus Station
Tracing a path through the parallel-world Oxford of Pullman’s fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials is much easier now that the author has kindly published Lyra’s Oxford, complete with map. There really is only one place to start: Exeter College (open afternoons, free admission) is the inspiration for Jordan College, Lyra’s home, where she clambers amongst the gargoyles.
Exeter College chapel
You can’t get up on the roof but exploration of this marvel of “tunnels, shaft, vaults and cellars” is well worth it.
Palmer’s Tower (also known as Pilgrim’s Tower in Northern Lights). is a must-climb; notice another similarity with the Rector’s Lodging of Exeter College which communicates (slightly indirectly) with the Fellows Garden (cf Pullman’s Library Garden) via French windows.
Library Garden of Pullman fame
From here, slip quietly down an alleyway and see if you can uncover the truth in the Bodleian Library (free admission) – in the novels “Bodley’s” is the repository of books about the alethiometer.
Entire expanse of Bodley’s, the second biggest library in the world
The Pitt Rivers Museum (free admission) is packed with anthropological treasures, but don’t get distracted by the shrunken heads: you’re here to look at the even spookier trepanned ones, just as Lyra does.
Pitt Rivers Museum of trepanned heads fame
On now to Jericho, the canal quarter where there have been unsavoury goings-on since Roman times. This is “Gyptian” country where Lyra searches for Billy Costa and the Venetian-style Oratory of St Barnabas the Chymist (real-life St Barnabas Church) towers over tiny backstreets and Castlemill Boatyard.
St Barnabas Church towering over the disputed Castlemill Boatyard
Sights from the book include the Eagle Ironworks, the Oxford Canal, the Fell Press and the Oratory of St Barnabas the Chymist, all in the Jericho area of Oxford)
Eagle Ironworks
Oxford Canal
Finally, head along St Giles and the Cornmarket just as Lyra would have done and bid farewell to your Oxford tour amid the calm green of the Botanic Garden.
Stately buildings along St Giles
Cornmarket pedestrian shopping area
Here you can sit on the very bench where Lyra and Will say goodbye at the close of the trilogy.
Oxford Botanical Gardens
Bookings now open.
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