Oxford Inscriptions: Inside the Weston Library
Blackwell Hall (the visitor section of the Weston Library in Broad Street) is normally open as follows:
Monday–Friday: 9am–5pm, Saturday: 10am–5pm, and
Sunday: 11am – 4pm,
but check here for any upcoming closures
SI BONUS ES INTRES: SI NEQUAM NEQUAQUAM
(If you are good, you may enter: if you are worthless, not at all)
This inscription is on an early seventeenth-century archway with eighteenth-century wrought-iron gates that was originally at Ascott Park in Stadhampton. The whole archway is shown below.
It was rebuilt for the West Hall of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, but has now moved to Oxford and forms the entrance from Blackwell Hall, the lively vestibule of the Weston Library (formerly the New Bodleian), into the scholarly part of the library which is only open to readers.
