Oxford Inscriptions: Former Dyson Perrins Laboratory, South Parks Road
BALLIOLENSIS
FECI
HYDATOECVS
O SI MELIVS
[I, Waterhouse, a Balliol man. made this.
O, if only it were better]
HYDATOECUS is a Latinized word from the
Greek ῠ̔́δωρ, ῠ̔́δᾰτος (water) and οίκος (house)
The Dyson Perrins Organic Chemistry Laboratory opened in 1915, and this inscription is also a chronogram giving this date. If you extract all the large letters you get the following roman numerals:
L + L + I + L + I + C + I + D + C + V + I + M + L + I + V
Add these up:
50 + 50 + 1 + 50 + 1 + 100 + 1 + 500 + 100 + 5 + 1 + 1000 + 50 + 1 + 5 and it comes to 1915
Or you can arrange the roman numerals in descending order for easier counting (MDCCLLLLVVIIIII), although the year 1915 is actually the much neater MCMXV
Paul Waterhouse (1861–1924) who designed this building was the son of the architect Alfred Waterhouse, and had been an undergraduate at Balliol College before training as an architect with his father from 1884 to 1887.
P R
EK IN
R S
[= PERKINS and PERRINS,
with duplicated letters omitted]
Charles William Dyson Perrins, the heir to the Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce company, endowed this laboratory that was named after him. To find his surname PERRINS in this inscription you have to read the PER down the left-hand side, and then the RINS down the right-hand side.
William Henry Perkin junior was the Waynflete Professor of Chemistry at Oxford from 1912 to 1929, and the Dyson Perrins Laboratory was built during his tenure. To find his surname PERKIN in the same inscription, you have to read the PER down the left-hand side as before, then go horizontally across the middle to find the KIN.
This building ceased to be the organic chemistry laboratory in 2003, and it is now part of the University of Oxford's School of Geography and Environment.