Editing St Antony's College, Oxford (section)

===Main building===
[[File:St Antony's College Library.JPG|thumb|upright|The college library in the Old Main building.]]
The college's main building was built in the early Victorian era for the [[Society of the Holy and Undivided Trinity]] at the behest of Marian Rebecca Hughes, the first woman to take monastic vows within the Church of England since the reformation. The order commissioned [[Charles Buckeridge]], a local architect of some renown, to design the convent buildings. After initially proposing a circular design based on the symbolism of the holy trinity, Buckeridge took to a more traditional approach and drew up the plans for what is now St Antony's main building some time before 1865. Whilst initially there were plans to enlarge the convent with a northerly extension, for which place was made in the building's design, further building never took place. The convent finally opened in November 1868.{{fact|date=March 2021}}

The total cost of the initial build was eight thousand pounds, a considerable sum at that time. It is said that upon first seeing the convent's new premises, the architect [[William Butterfield]] commented that it was the 'best modern building in Oxford after my college', by which he meant Keble. St Antony's acquired the former convent in 1950 after it had been vacated by the convent and [[Halifax House]], which had occupied the premises in the immediate post war period. The building's chapel, which was never consecrated and now houses the college library, was built in the years 1891–1894 to Buckeridge's original design. The three panel paintings round the apse of the former chapel are by [[Charles Edgar Buckeridge]].<ref name=Saint >{{Cite journal|last=Saint|first=Andrew|date=1973|title=Charles Buckeridge and his family |url=http://oxoniensia.org/volumes/1973/saint.pdf |journal=Oxoniensia|volume=38|pages=357–372}}</ref> The main building's undercroft, now the Gulbenkian Reading Room, was initially used by the nuns as a refectory, a role it continued to play until the completion of the Hilda Besse building in 1970.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/about/images/HistoryofBuildingsSite.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=2013-05-08 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131218183509/http://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/about/images/HistoryofBuildingsSite.pdf |archive-date=18 December 2013 |df=dmy-all }}</ref>