In July 1756, the writer Horace Walpole received a letter from his friend George Montagu describing an alarming incident in Oxford. An old acquaintance of theirs by the name of Parson Fletcher had been sitting in an auditorium on Broad Street when a beam fell and hit him on the head. Only his fashionable beaver-skin hat “preserved his brains”.
The Sheldonian Theatre, where Fletcher was struck, is not known for its loose woodwork. Between 1664 – when its foundation stones were laid – and the present day, it has been celebrated as one of the architectural marvels of the university city, with its honey-coloured masonry, elegant cupola and row of sculpted heads guarding its perimeter. The professor of astronomy who designed it was none other than Christopher Wren.