St Aldate’s Church
Evangelical Christianity was an important influence in Lawrence’s upbringing. The Lawrence family attended services at St Aldate’s, opposite the main entrance to Christ Church. Lawrence took an active part in the life of the church, helping to run its branch of the Church Lads Brigade and teaching in its Sunday School. St Aldate’s dates back to the 12th Century, with the church we see today developed during the 19th Century.
Ashmolean Museum
Lawrence became interested in archaeology while a schoolboy, and scoured Oxford building sites for fragments of mediaeval pottery. He gave the best examples to the Ashmolean Museum, where he became an enthusiastic helper. Some of the most influential friendships of his youth were with staff at the museum. He later helped to build the Ashmolean’s collection of Hittite seal-stones.
The Ashmolean holds some important portraits and drawings of Lawrence by Augustus John and William Roberts, as well as John’s portrait of Feisal used as the frontispiece to Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Various other works and objects associated with Lawrence in its collection include some of his brass rubbings, Arab robes and the carved doors he brought back from Jidda after a visit in 1921.
Bodleian Library
Lawrence was a regular user of the Bodleian Library during his undergraduate years. In 1923 he presented his major working manuscript of Seven Pillars of Wisdom (the so-called Oxford Text) to the library. The Bodleian holds a substantial collection of Lawrence letters including all those associated with his family; it is a primary source for any serious student of the life of T. E. Lawrence and access to the papers is given to any serious researcher.
Museum of the History of Science
Lawrence was a keen photographer, a skill learned from his father. Between 1911 and 1914 he was responsible for photography at the British Museum’s Carchemish excavations in Syria. The Museum of the History of Science in Broad Street holds the camera that Lawrence used at Carchemish, and also his father’s camera.
Wolvercote Cemetery
Wolvercote Cemetery in north Oxford was opened in 1889. It is here that Lawrence’s parents are buried, as well as his elder brother Bob. The graves are unmarked, but visitors to the cemetery might be able to find them using the following description from Dick Benson-Gyles’ book The Boy in the Mask: The Hidden World of Lawrence of Arabia. The book also contains a photograph of the graves.
Thomas and Sarah Lawrence’s “plain rectangular grave, part-shaded by fir trees near the junction of two paths, is overlaid with stone chips and contained within granite kerbstones. There is nothing, not even a headstone, to tell the curious observer that buried here is the father of one of the world’s most legendary figures.
The only clue is a puzzling dedication carved along the sides of the granite enclosure: ‘In memory of F.H. and W.G. Lawrence killed in action 1915, and of their father who died, April 8 1919. Also of T.E. Lawrence who died May 19, 1935. And of their mother, who died November 15, 1959, aged 98.’
More puzzling still is a small metal plaque stuck in the ground at the foot of the grave bearing the fading inscription: ‘T.E. Lawrence’. It is said to have been put there by Cemetery officials for the benefit of people looking for the family grave – the grave in which Lawrence’s mother also lies, her coffin placed two feet above Thomas Chapman’s.”
Lawrence’s brother Bob is buried beneath the grass separating the two graves above and to the left of that of his parents.