An exciting journey into the past and present. Oxford University’s Bodleian Library is one of the most famous in the world and its major buildings are: the Radcliffe Camera the Old Bodleian cluster and the Weston Library. The two tunnels start from the Old Schools Quad part of a complex that also contains the Tower of Orders, the Divinity School, and Duke Humphrey’s Library. The latter two were used extensively in the Harry Potter films.
The oldest tunnel is nowadays called the Gladstone Link after William Gladstone the famous 19th century prime minister and this video takes you through it into two large underground reading rooms and then into the Radcliffe Camera. It is strange to think that all of this is going on under your feet as you explore Radcliffe Square.
The newer tunnel links the Old Bodleian to the New Bodleian, now renamed the Weston Library, passing between the Sheldonian Theatre and the Clarendon Building.
In the older tunnel the books were moved about in trolleys. In the new one they were transported on a complex contraption called a conveyor and there is still a working one of these in the British Library