Above: Accommodation blocks flank a central pavilion. The blocks, not all in view, are (right) Block A (undergraduates), Block B1 (Fellows), Block B2 (graduates); (left) Block C (graduates) and Block D (graduates).
The new Master’s Field development is about five minutes’ walk away from the College’s Broad Street site. It has over 200 study bedrooms for undergraduate and graduate students in ten accommodation blocks. Its completion means that Balliol can now offer all undergraduates accommodation for all the years of their course and has some 60 more rooms for graduates than before.
At the centre of the site is a pavilion, with changing rooms and a squash court beneath it, as well as the energy centre that services the whole site. There is also accommodation for Fellows, including a flat for the visiting Eastman Professor.
Access from the south end is from Jowett Walk. Here the blocks, including the undergraduate block, are grouped around a beech tree at the centre of a ‘quad’, which leads to the Master’s Field itself — Balliol’s sportsground — and the Pavilion. The blocks on the other side of the Pavilion can be reached from the quad via a path behind the Pavilion, or from entrances on St Cross Road. These blocks, all for graduates, are opposite Holywell Manor, the centre of Balliol’s graduate community, and St Cross Church, the home of Balliol’s Historic Collections Centre. The Pavilion and many of the rooms look out on to the playing field and Oxford landmarks. The south end of the site is adjacent to Balliol’s Jowett Walk buildings, where there is further Balliol student accommodation.
The photographs above and below were taken by Stuart Bebb following the departure of the builders in June 2021. The newest rooms will be furnished over the summer and ready for occupation in Michaelmas Term 2021, when Block A (already occupied) will become the undergraduate block.
For more detail and photographs, see also:
• Master’s Field: accommodation
• Master’s Field: pavilion, squash court and changing rooms
