A COLLEGE has opened up its historic spaces to the public using a new 3D tour system on the internet.

Using new scanning technology, St Edmund Hall has created models of some of its most famous rooms to allow anyone to view them using a similar interface to Google Street View.

The college is usually open from 10am-4pm daily, but access to many of its inside spaces is restricted to students and academics.

An example is the college library, housed in the converted twelfth-century church of St Peter-in-the-East, one of the oldest churches in Oxford.

Senior college tutor Dr Robert Wilkins said the new online tour would allow people to view it without disturbing those studying inside.

He said: “It’s great to be able to share this beautiful space with people more widely. Since it is a well-used, busy library, this is the perfect solution to allow people to look around.”

The virtual tours were made by Tour Dimensional, which has also produced 3D tours for the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and Oxford Brookes University.

Creative director Greg Harris said: “The technology uses 2D and 3D sensors to quickly capture images and space geometry.

“The result is a 3D model of the space which you can move around in.”

“The process of scanning a space varies, but the scanner can scan around 2000 square feet per hour. The library took just over an hour and the scan was ready to view online the following day.”

College communications officer Claire Hooper added: “The results are really impressive and it is a very immersive experience.

“It’s ideal for giving potential applicants, wherever they might be in the world, access to explore where they could end up studying.”

Once a fashionable university church, St Peter-in-the-East lost virtually all its congregation as the number of domestic houses declined within its city centre parish.

It closed as a place of worship in 1965 and reopened as the college library in 1970, with many of its distinctive architectural features – such as monuments and stained glass windows – preserved.

As well as the library, other college rooms that users can view include the Old Dining Hall, the college bar, the postgraduates’ common room and the chapel built by Stephen Penton in the late 17th century.