I dearly love the Inspector Morse, Inspector Lewis, and Endeavour mysteries. So the idea of staying at The Randolph Hotel in Oxford really appealed to me. The hotel featured in both the Inspector Morse and Inspector Lewis television series several times. The cast also stayed at the hotel during filming in 1987. There is a Morse Bar, which features photos of the cast of Inspector Morse, especially its star, John Thaw.
Built in the Gothic Victorian style, it is a 5-star hotel in Oxford, on the south side of Beaumont Street, at the corner of Magdalen Street. The Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum is on the other side of Beaumont, across from the hotel. On Magdalen, just across from the hotel is the Martyr’s Memorial.
This monument was built 300 years after the events of the English Reformation. It commemorates the deaths of the Bishop of Worcester, Hugh Latimer, and the Bishop of London, Nicholas Ridley in 1555. They were both burned at the stake for heresy, near where the memorial is located, because of their Protestant beliefs. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was imprisoned in a nearby tower at this time and watched the deaths of his colleagues from his window. A few months later, he was dispatched in a similar fashion and therefore is included in the inscription on the monument, which was completed in 1843.
When construction began on the Randolph Hotel in 1864, many people wanted it to be in the same Gothic Revival style as the Martyr’s Memorial. The City Council wanted it to be in the classical style of the early 19th century Regency buildings on the rest of the two block long Beaumont Street. They ended up compromising with a simplified Gothic façade in brick, instead of stone.
Colin Dexter, author of the novels upon which the Inspector Morse television series was based, often used to stay at the hotel and drink in the bar that existed back then. The series was produced between January of 1987 and November of 2000. There were 33 two-hour, self contained, episodes. The author of the novels made cameo appearances in all but three of them. John Thaw starred as Detective Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately was Sergeant Lewis.
I think that he was so popular because, even though he was brilliant, he was far from perfect. Professionally he would often come to the wrong conclusion and arrest the wrong person. He tended to be quite cynical and lacked ambition. Plus he often rubbed higher-ups the wrong way. In his personal life, he was a romantic, who had little success at love. In the final episode, his death is explained as caused by heart problems exacerbated by heavy drinking.
The first spin-off, Inspector Lewis, starring the same actor who had played Sergeant Lewis, Kevin Whately, ran from 2006 to 2015. In 2012 a two-hour special prequel film, Endeavour, (set in 1965) was aired with Shaun Evans playing Detective Constable Morse. A series followed from 2013 to 2023.
Morse’s first name, Endeavour, was revealed on only one occasion during the run of Inspector Morse. He explains to a lady friend that his father was obsessed with Captain James Cook and so he was named after the HMS Endeavour. Otherwise he was simply called “Morse”. There were many references to the earlier series and audiences saw how the younger version of Morse evolved into the older version over the years.
Our group traveled by coach from London to Oxford in roughly two hours. Our cases were taken into the hotel and stored until our rooms were ready. We were met by our Oxford Tour Director, Sally, who took those of us who were interested on a half hour orientation tour of Oxford. It was graduation weekend, so there were loads of graduates in their gowns and with their families. After this little walk, everyone went their separate ways until we were supposed to meet up for our tours of the Griffith Institute and the Ashmolean Museum.
In addition to being a Morse fan, I have always been fond of Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll. I even played Alice more than once as I had blonde hair and blue eyes. I began playing her in Minneapolis, when I was a child, and continued to do so when we moved to Texas, where blue-eyed blondes were not too common. Never got to played Snow White, but always got cast as Alice or Sleeping Beauty. Then there was the one time I played George Washington at the age of ten. But we won’t get into that.
The hotel also had Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) associations. He had been a student at Christ Church in Oxford and remained there for most of his life as a teacher. Alice Liddell, a daughter of Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church, is thought to be the most likely inspiration for Alice. But Carroll himself always denied it.
At any rate, the hotel’s restaurant was The Alice. Both it and the bedrooms had distinctive Alice touches. I had determined that I wanted to have at least one meal in the restaurant and another meal (or drink) in the Morse Bar. It was noon when I returned to the hotel. The bar had several people in it, but The Alice was not yet too crowded. The website had also indicated that reservations were necessary for dinner at the restaurant, so I decided to have lunch there and hang out at the bar later.
I had eaten a good breakfast in my room back in London at 7:30am. At noon, I was hungry, but not overly so. The Spring Risotto with wild mushrooms and truffle looked like a good choice and it was. I sat facing the windows where I could see the Martyr’s Memorial and watch people going by. The photo I took of the restaurant was a little off kilter, but I was trying to be unobtrusive.
After a leisurely lunch, I still had a little over an hour before the tour would commence, and so decided to go ahead and have a drink in the Morse Bar. The drinks were pretty much all named after elements of the television shows. I selected the Last Endeavour, which consisted of Beefeater’s Gin, Prosecco, and Limoncello. It was delicious and I figured I would likely have another when I had some pub food for dinner.
Business was picking up with more and more people coming in. So, when I finished my drink, I went to the desk to see if my room might be ready early. It wasn’t quite yet. I was directed to a room called the Snug to hang out until it was ready. I went in there and only waited about ten minutes before I was told that my room was ready and handed my keys. Yippee.
The room was on the first floor, so I took the really cool-looking staircase up as it would be quicker than the lift. At that point, I had about twenty minutes before I needed to meet up with the group. Just enough time to do a little unpacking for later and to freshen up a bit. This time the room had a small shower, but a large, deep tub. Great for a soaking bubble bath later.
One more historic association for the hotel. In about 1130, Henry I built a new royal palace in the vicinity of the Randolph Hotel. It was called Beaumont Palace. The street the hotel is on was named Beaumont Street after this palace. Two of his grandson Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine’s sons, Richard the Lionhearted (King Richard I) and John Lackland (King John) were born there in 1157 and 1167 respectively. Ironically the last remains of the palace were destroyed when Beaumont Street was laid out in 1829. Prior to that, during the Reformation in the 1500s, many of the building stones from the palace were reused in Christ Church College (founded in 1546) and St John’s College (founded in 1555).
Next – The treasures at the Griffith Institute
