Charsley's Hall


Charsley's Hall was a private hall of the University of Oxford. After 1891 it was renamed as Marcon's Hall.
The hall was first established in 1851 and later given recognition under the University statute De Aulis Privatis, passed in 1855. This allowed any Master of Arts or other member of Convocation aged at least twenty-eight years to open a private hall after obtaining a licence to do so. The hall was in Parks Road, at the eastern corner of Museum Terrace, on the other side of the road from the Oxford University Museum, and was named after its master, William Henry Charsley, of Christ Church. At the 1871 census, it contained nine residents.
Charsley's Hall had no published tuition fees, members electing their tutors and making their own arrangements for payment, but in general the terms were higher than elsewhere. Despite this, the hall was popular. One writer noted in 1883
By 1889, migration to Charsley's was seen as a way of circumventing some requirements of the colleges, and its demise was prematurely foreseen by The Oxford Magazine.
Charsley's Hall features several times in The Lay of the First Minstrel, a parody of Sir Walter Scott dating from the 1870s, beginning:
In 1889–1890 Charsley's had forty-seven undergraduates, while Turrell's, the only other private hall, had seven. The Master, William Henry Charsley, appears to have kept a school for boys as well as a house of the university. This is suggested as a reason for matriculations at Charsley's at an unusually young age. By the end of 1891 the name of Charsley's had disappeared, as the mastership of the hall was taken over by Charles Abdy Marcon and it thus took his name as Marcon's Hall. Marcon had himself been educated at Charsley's.
Whitaker's Almanack for 1897 lists three private halls in the university, based on the University Calendar for 1895: Marcon's, Turrell's and Grindle's. Marcon's continued under that name until C. A. Marcon retired in 1918.

Notable people