It is this which makes Balliol Hall so particularly
interesting to the ordinary man; knowledge of present-day affairs,
not of history, is all that is needed to appreciate its array of
portraits.
Nor has Balliol been unmindful of the social movements of our time.
It is the chosen home of the Workers' Educational Association in
Oxford, and in Arnold Toynbee it produced one of the pioneers and
martyrs of modern social progress. Truly Balliol has much more to
show to the visitor than its ultra-modern front on the Broad would
promise.
The street, on which Balliol looks out, is associated with the most
famous scene of Oxford history; the stone with a cross in the middle
of the road marks the traditional site of the burning of the bishops,
Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, although their memorial has been
erected 200 yards further north in St. Giles', and though
antiquarians argue (probably correctly) that the actual pyre was a
little further south, in fact, behind the present row of Broad Street
houses.
But it is the living activity of the college, not the sad memories of
the street in front, that gives the interest to the picture.
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