So Hoos Asking: What Is a Limestone Spire From Across the Pond Doing on Grounds?

May 30, 2025
the Merton Spire in the UVA Pavilion IV garden

Nearly 100 years after it was installed, the Merton Spire is the centerpiece of the lower Pavilion VI garden, linking UVA with Merton College, Oxford. (Photo by Erin Edgerton, University Communications.)

Don’t worry if you’re unsure about the three-ton limestone sculpture in the lower garden of Pavilion VI, why it’s there remains a mystery.

The sculpture is the Merton Spire, a really big gift from Merton College, Oxford, that originally perched atop a chapel buttress. A plaque on the piece reads “A pinnacle of Merton College Chapel Tower, erected 1451, presented to the University of Virginia, 1927, by Merton College, Oxford.”

The University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors accepted the gift at its April 22, 1927, meeting. A July 15, 1933, article in The Charlottesville Daily Progress said the spire was “a token of esteem” from Oxford, recognizing the schools’ shared values – but the reason it was placed at the University remains unclear.
 

the Merton Spire in the Eastern Gardens circa 1930

An undated photo of the east gardens, possibly from the mid-1930s, shows the Merton Spire on the right. The steps led to a roadway that ran through the gardens until the 1960s. (Ralph Holsinger Collection, Special Collections)

The lack of details is not limited to UVA’s records. Julian Reid, the current Merton College archivist, examined that college’s Governing Body minutes from January 1926 to December 1927 and found only two mentions of chapel spires or pinnacles.

The March 21, 1927, minutes noted a resolution “that the College offer a pinnacle from the Tower to the University of Virginia on condition that that University bears all the cost of removal.”

A second resolution, on May 27, 1927, stated “that the remaining pinnacle at present standing in the Grove be disposed of by the Estates Bursar.”

“There is nothing in the minutes in the 15 months prior to March 1927 suggesting why Merton might have wanted to offer the first pinnacle to the University of Virginia, although I can only think that it was initiated from the Virginia end,” Reid wrote in an email. “Further, there is no clear indication as to whether the pinnacles had been removed recently from the chapel or if they had been removed some time earlier.”

Tuition Covered For Virginia Households Making <$100K
Tuition Covered For Virginia Households Making <$100K

Tyler Jo Smith, a classical archaeologist in the UVA art history department, came to UVA in 1998, after 10 years in England. She received her master’s and doctorate at Merton. Her adviser there had told her of the spire at UVA, and she sought it out when she arrived.

“I immediately looked at it and thought ‘this is crazy,’” Smith said. “What’s this thing doing here? I’ve got a photograph of myself standing next to it, and I started looking into it in my first couple of years here.”

Smith corresponded with Merton College medieval European historian Roger Highfield in 2004 to get more information on the spire.

“When the original pinnacles on the chapel tower became dangerous and had to be replaced, they were offered to any reasonable person or body that was willing to take them away,” wrote Highfield. “Someone in 1927 was presumably able to persuade the University of Virginia to have your pinnacle freighted across the Atlantic.

the plaque on the Merton Spire

A plaque mounted on the spire gives a brief history of the piece that dominates the lower garden of Pavilion VI. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications.)

“I suspect that someone in 1927 must have known of the connection and thought that the University of Virginia should take the bursar’s offer,” Highfield wrote. “But who?”

Highfield was unable to answer his own question. The Merton College fellow, who died in 2017, said he would comb through some records, but came up empty.

“We tried to see if we could make any kind of connection at that time period,” Smith said. “And we just came up short every time we tried to find something.”

No matter its origin, the spire for nearly a century in “The Italian Garden,” designed by Warren Manning in the early 1900s to connect the Lawn with the then-new hospital, landscape architect Mary Hughes said in 2007.

“There was a north/south road installed when William A. Lambeth and Warren H. Manning re-imagined the gardens around 1915 and included roads so visitors could motor through them,” said Garth Anderson, facilities historian for Facilities Management. 

After the east garden road was closed, the serpentine walls were extended to the range, and a woodland-themed shade garden – unique among the 10 gardens – was created around the spire.

the Merton Spire in the UVA Pavilion IV garden

The Merton Spire, a gift from Merton College, Oxford, is carved from soft, porous limestone. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications.)

The spire was partially shattered in 2005 when a falling maple tree struck it during a tornado. 

The spire is carved from soft, porous Corallian oolitic limestone, the same stone used in many Oxford buildings. Because the original quarry had long since closed, conservators from Jablonski Berkowitz Conservation Inc. enlisted a Canadian stonecutter to craft a replacement from an 800-pound block of Clipsham limestone, which was then sandblasted to match the original’s aged look.

And there it sits, for whatever reason.

Have a burning question for our crack team of UVA historians, experts, students and staff to answer? Send your queries to HoosAsking@virginia.edu.

Media Contact

Matt Kelly

University News Associate Office of University Communications

Article Information

June 20, 2025

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