A new book puts the spotlight on the forgotten architect of Oxford, writes CHRIS KOENIG

Who designed the Bridge of Sighs in Oxford, or the ornate New Examination Schools, or the former High School for Girls in St Giles, with its apparently perfect Georgian lines, or the Military College in Temple Cowley, which Lord Nuffield later made his campaign headquarters for driving Morris Motors forward, or the chapel at Balliol, the cricket pavilion in the University Parks, or the restoration of Carfax Tower?

When most of us think of Oxford architects we think of 17th-century geniuses such as Wren, or Hawkesmoor, or of other nameless, medieval masters from an earlier, ecclesiastical age.

The name of Sir Thomas Graham Jackson - christened Oxford Jackson by William Whyte in his new book of that name - seldom springs to mind.

Yet he was far more prolific than any of his predecessors and when accepting an honorary degree in a ceremony carefully choreographed by Lord Curzon (that most superior purzon, as the unkind ditty ran) the Professor of Poetry even announced that he "might most rightly be called the creator of modern Oxford".

When he died aged 88 in 1924, the Oxford Magazine mourned him as "Oxford's most distinguished architect since Wren". Certainly he had been responsible for giving Oxford, and indeed Cambridge to some extent, not to mention several public schools including Radley, a sort of Victorian overlay that contributes greatly to the feel of the place: clubby, even elitist, mainly masculine; the very feel perhaps that now puts off state school sixth-formers from applying to Oxford University.

Yet that atmosphere, following the great reforming commission of the university in the mid-19th century, did not come about by mistake. It was deliberately nurtured, though to be fair, the great reformers such as Benjamin Jowett wanted to spread the public school spirit to all, not only to those who had actually been to public schools.

In this respect, Jackson was commissioned to design the Non-Collegiate Building next door to his magnificently eclectic New Examination School.

Whyte points out: "It was intended to provide inexpensive education for those excluded from Oxford by the high cost of college living." Wags were quick to note, though, that its walls were of rubble while those of the New Examination Schools were ashlar.

The Oxford Magazine commented that if this was intended "by some occult symbolism to signify the relation of the Non-Collegiate students to the University," then "it is neither fair nor courteous to hint that the relation is that of the rough to the polished".

Extraordinary as it may seem now, all things Victorian fell out of fashion shortly after Jackson's death and despite his fame in life he was almost entirely forgotten for some 60 or 70 years. Worse, he was actually decried, with Peter Levi describing him as "the only really preposterous architect".

Anyone who has been to Venice will realise, of course, that the Bridge of Sighs in Oxford is actually modelled on the Rialto: but did you know that such a symbol of the city was dreamt up by Jackson and not built until 1913.

Oxford Jackson: Architecture, Education, Status and Style 1835-1924, by William Whyte, is published by Oxford University Press.