Visitors to the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford, 1773–1826

This paper investigates the visitors to the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford, from 1773 until 1826. This timespan corresponds to the periods in office of the first two Radcliffe Observers, Thomas Hornsby (1771–1810) and Abraham Robertson (1810–1826) and closely overlaps with that considered by Steinicke (2023) who examined those who visited the various homes of William and Caroline Herschel from 1777 to 1822. While Steinicke used surviving Visitor Books as a source of data, similar sources are not available for the Radcliffe Observatory, but some important stories about this heritage building, the people involved, and the ways in which the building was designed and used emerge from a variety of more qualitative sources. This paper shows that the Radcliffe Observatory was built with a variety of different visitors in mind, and that it had the differentiations and hierarchies of Georgian society built into its structure, alongside its varied functions.