Emperors Heads outside the entrance to the Sheldonian theatre, Broad St, Oxford. Photo: Quintin Lake

Close-up of one of the thirteen Emperors' Heads outside the entrance to the Sheldonian theatre, Oxford. Photo: Quintin Lake

Architectural photography of the Emperors Heads, Sheldonian theatre, Broad St, Oxford. The official name for such heads is “herms”; the original accounts describe these heads as “termains”; and some people call them philosophers. But Max Beerbohm in Zuleika Dobson called them “Emperors”, and that is the name that has stuck. Each head shows a different type of beard. The present heads are the third set carved between 1970 and 1972 by Michael Black. The first set lasted 200 years, but by 1868 they were crumbling and new ones were erected; undergraduates, however, daubed these in paint, and the harsh cleaning they received caused them to wear badly, so that they could be described by John Betjeman (in his verse autobiography Summoned by Bells) as “the mouldering busts round the Sheldonian” when he came up in 1925.

View more / Buy Prints / License Stock images from this photoshoot here

More Stock Photography of Oxford

Photography © Quintin Lake, 2010