Balliol Archives - tracing a Balliol man

Records Management

Balliol College Archives & Manuscripts

Tracing a Balliol Man

Balliol first admitted women students in 1979, so as yet their records are still closed. Oxford’s early women’s colleges were Lady Margaret Hall, Somerville, St Hugh’s and St Hilda’s.

NB the College Archives contain information only about deceased members of Balliol. For enquiries about living Old Members please contact the Alumni Officer, noting that under the Data Protection Act the College is not able to provide any personal information about any living Old Member to any third party.

Getting started
Information we usually have about former students
13 th century to ca. 1540
ca. 1540 – 1835
1835 onwards
Information we may have
Information we usually do not have
Why isn’t there more information about students?
Other archive sources
Further reading

Getting started

In order to request a search for your research subject in Balliol records, you will need at least:

Surname
First initial or full forename
Preferably, approximate dates when he might have attended University (most men were ca 17-21 years old).

You may be able to find some information in printed sources, which are increasingly available online; see Further Reading, below.

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Information we usually have about former students

We should be able to tell you

whether or not a named individual attended Balliol College from the late 16th century onwards,
if so, when
what degree he (and more recently she) received, if any.

Most students matriculated (formally registered) at Balliol when they first came up. However, some did not, particularly during certain periods, and in such cases we may not have any record of their attendance. Until the 20 th century, many students came to Oxford without ever intending to get a degree. Except for those entering the professions, the experience of having been at university and a modicum of study was often enough to continue into a successful career.

Members up to ca. 1540

Balliol, alone among the old foundations, is unfortunate in that none of its mediaeval admissions registers or account books survive. We can consult Emden’s work for you, but cannot usually add any information to his very thorough research. Knowledge of the early membership of the College is entirely dependent on chance appearances in legal documents and the records of other institutions.

Members ca. 1540-1835

Joseph Foster’s Alumni Oxoniensis provides good information on those who matriculated at the University from 1500-1886, and we can consult these volumes for you. Foster is now available in searchable formats online via www.archive.org - see below for links. Foster's information rarely adds to that in the College Registers, and vice versa. However, though generally reliable, Foster is not infallible. His work is based largely on University records, and can occasionally be misleading in two ways. Firstly, especially in the earlier part of the period, admission to and residence at the College without matriculation in the University or graduation was quite common - such cases are not listed by Foster at all. Secondly, migration between Colleges was much more frequent than it is now. Migrations were not explicitly noted in University records, so Foster attributes some Balliol men to other Colleges, and vice versa.

The most useful Balliol source is the series of annual lists drawn up in ten manuscript volumes by Andrew Clark about 1910. Clark's lists are based on a systematic examination of the admissions and degrees registers (which survive from 1636) Bursars' books (from 1544) and records of corporate acts (from 1514). The information available is usually:

the member's full name
his father's name, social status or occupation, and residence
whether he was his father's only, eldest, second son and so on
his status in the College (Servitor, Commoner, Scholar, Fellow Commoner, Fellow)
the date of his admission and duration of his residence in Oxford
whether he received an exhibition (a college scholarship) and the degrees he took, if any.

Neither age at admission nor previous places of education were recorded by the College. Mothers’ names and family relationships with previous members were not recorded either, but can often be found - there are many instances of a man following his brother, father, uncle or grandfather in the College.

Members since ca. 1835.

Details of individual students are listed in the published Balliol College Register for students and Fellows 1832-1990, arranged by year of matriculation at Balliol. Detailed entries begin in 1854; these are based on a) student records held here and b) information sent to us by Old Members, so they vary widely in the amount of information available. The 2nd and 3rd editions, covering matriculations 1833-1950, are available online. Entries usually follow the format below:

Surname and forename(s)
Date of birth
Father’s name, sometimes profession, often place of residence (town/county, not a street address). NB Mothers’ names are not mentioned.
Father’s date of matriculation at Balliol where applicable
Family relationships with other Balliol men where applicable (e.g. brother of H.G. Smith, Balliol 1876). Non-Balliol siblings are not mentioned.
Education prior to Balliol: name of school or previous university
Date of matriculation at Balliol and years of residence in Oxford
Name(s) of Balliol tutor(s)
Details of College and University sport and society membership where applicable
Details of scholarships, exhibitions and prizes awarded where applicable
Dates of exams, subjects, date and class of degree(s)
Details of subsequent career
Year(s) of marriage(s), wife’s name and often wife’s father’s name, number of children.
Date of death

NB most entries are only 3-4 lines long, and not every type of information listed above will be available for every individual. Details of post-Balliol life depend heavily upon the individual concerned bothering to update the College. We can provide a typescript or facsimile of the Register entry.

Up to 1920, the entries in the printed registers usually include most of what can easily be discovered about members from College sources, although sometimes additional details about sporting and social activity, academic work and the occasional disciplinary peccadillo can be found.

From 1920 there are files of correspondence, admission forms, letters of recommendation etc. for many (and from 1945, for all) members, but these are closed if they relate to living persons or are less than thirty years old. There is a large collection of group photographs ca. 1860-1970, but many have no identifications indicated. An online searchable database covering the principal albums is available.

We also actively collect material about our alumni, and ask for reciprocal information exchange. It quite often happens with genealogical research that enquirers know a lot about some alumnus which is interesting to us, and anything about alumni which is put into our files will benefit future researchers.

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Information we may have

Mentions in Club, Sport or Society minutes or other papers
Photographs (see the online Photographs database and Portraits catalogue)
Obituaries, if sent to or collected by the College, or if in the College Record
Miscellaneous other information – we do keep files on past members
Entries from the Dictionary of National Biography, Who’s Who and other similar reference books

These categories apply to ca. 1850 onwards. If we have a photograph, we can often provide a good digital version of it. (See our Reprographics Policy.)

If a member is found to have received an exhibition, the name of the exhibition may be an important clue, as eligibility was very limited. Thus Snell Exhibitioners, for whom detailed biographies have been published, were always graduates of Glasgow University. Similarly, Blundell's Scholars were always from Blundell's School, Tiverton, Devon. Foundation or Domus Scholarship places were without regional or other restrictions, but were in the gift of individual Fellows, each of whom had a place at his disposal. The name of the Fellow to whom a Scholar owed his nomination is sometimes recorded: since nepotism was rife this is often helpful. Because there were regional and age restrictions on eligibility for exhibitions and scholarships, appropriate evidence had to be produced. A number of certified baptismal register extracts which were presented for this purpose survive (mostly of the early nineteenth century).

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Balliol Alumni from Blundell’s School

There has been a strong link between Blundell’s School in Tiverton, Devon, and Balliol College for four centuries. See also the Lists of Blundell Scholars and Blundell Fellows.

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Members of New Inn Hall

Balliol absorbed New Inn Hall in the 1880s, and acquired its records, including its admissions and other records for 1831-1887. No pre-1800 records survive at Balliol.

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Estates Records

The College's estates records, like the archives of any great landowner, can be enormously helpful to the genealogist, but usually a very specific initial lead is needed. Speculative searches are not generally worthwhile, except in a number of cases where the College has had an interest in practically a whole parish and there are convenient lists of tenants and occupants. One such case is Ufton, Warwickshire, for which there are manor court records, rent books etc. of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and surveys of the nineteenth which give details of all occupants and their families.

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Information we usually do not have

Precise dates of birth of students before the 1880s (although this can often be estimated from the given age at matriculation)
Names of relatives other than the father, or any other details about the family
Copies of essays, dissertations or theses. Dissertations and theses may be held in the University Library.
Details of course work or examination results. This information is generally collected by the University rather than Colleges.
Information on a student’s post-Balliol life, career or family, except what they send us for the Register.

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Why isn’t there more information about students?

College records tend to hold little information about individual students’ time here, except mentions in Society papers or sport photographs. Until relatively recently, a student’s exact course of study tended to be decided in tutorial meetings and was usually not recorded at all.

Exams and academic records in general are administered through the University rather than the Colleges and so any record of actual exam marks will be in the University Archives. For similar reasons we have no lecture lists etc. The University’s old examination papers can be a source for information on subject curricula. In Colege records, marks and progress for individuals are recorded in Masters’ and Senior Tutors’ Handshaking papers where these survive, but they do so only patchily. Records management was an unknown concept.

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Other Archive Sources

See our Enquiries FAQ pages

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