Garden Quadrangle

In the old collegiate tradition, the buttery was not
simply a café or bar. It belonged to the domestic machinery of the
college: the place associated with provisions, drink, accounts and the
daily feeding of a community of scholars.

At Balliol the tradition remains visible. The Buttery lies beneath the
Hall in the Garden Quadrangle and still serves drinks and light
refreshments. Hall, kitchen and Buttery therefore form an enduring
assembly: places where the intellectual life of the college is supported
by the ordinary necessities of eating, drinking and meeting one another.

Its importance is partly social. Tutorials and lectures may organize
learning, but places such as the Buttery provide the unprogrammed interval
afterward — conversation, friendship, argument and acquaintance across
generations.