Having discussed the centenary of Hertford College’s ‘Bridge of Sighs’ last week, I turn today to the milestone anniversary of an Oxford building just a few yards from this structure and with an iconic status even greater. This is the Sheldonian Theatre, which was completed to the design of Sir Christopher Wren 350 years ago and has played a crucial role in the life of the University ever since.

First, though, permit me a brief digression concerning the national obsession — at least as reflected in the media — with evenly spaced markers along the axis of time.

In the course of an amusing piece in the Spectator recently, Douglas Murray identified the condition of “anniversary-itis” and asked why “accidents of the calendar have in some places become the dominant factors in our national life”. He has a point. Within 15 minutes on the morning I was writing this piece I heard on the radio no fewer than three items inspired solely by numerical milestones. The first concerned Cliff Richard and the imminent release of his 100th album; the second was about geologists Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews who are judged by their peers to have gained insufficient renown for their discovery of plate tectonics 50 years ago; and the third plugged the later appearance on Midweek of singer Kiki Dee, celebrating her Golden Jubilee in show-biz.

The BBC need not, I think, feel any need to apologise for the centennial indulgence in the music of Richard Wagner at the Proms, which provoked one of Murray’s principal charges. Anniversary-itis suits me just fine if it produces the glories of The Ring under Daniel Barenboim or the stately majesty of Parsifal from Mark Elder.

Likewise, one cannot grudge a moment in the limelight for the Sheldonian Theatre, though celebration of its 350th appears to be confined, as far as I can judge (with the help of the Internet), to the publication of a new book on its early history.

The Sheldonian Theatre: Architecture and Learning in Seventeenth Century Oxford (Yale, £35), is by the architectural historian Anthony Geraghty, the senior lecturer in the history of art at the University of York.

It is a handsome volume, supplied with many striking images of its subject, including superb interior shots by John Cairns. The elegantly written book is far from being popular history, though, with its concentration on the religious and political influences that shaped the building’s development and a highly detailed exposition of the architectural principles applied in its construction.

The project was conceived in the 1630s when Archbishop William Laud, the Chancellor of the University, determined to end the unacceptable profanity — as he saw it — of the continued use of St Mary’s Church for the transaction of University business, including the giving of degrees, an oddly ebullient affair in those days.

Following the interruption of the English Civil War and subsequent Commonwealth — during which Laud was tried for treason and executed — the plan was revived at the Restoration and carried out under the management of John Fell, the Dean of Christ, to show the University’s commitment to episcopal religion. Its generous financial backer, immortalised in its name, was Gilbert Sheldon, like Laud both Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury.

As Anthony Geraghty writes: “His willingness [to foot the bill] testifies not only to his munificence (which was considerable) but also to his conviction that university learning had a central role to play in the consolidation and perpetuation of orthodoxy.”

What the book makes abundantly clear is that the Sheldonian is properly a theatre and originally conceived (as contemporary sources make clear) “for conferring degrees, dissection of bodies and acting of plays”.

This means that it is not entirely inappropriate, as sneerers like to claim, for the place to be symbolised on those brown-on-white direction signs around the city with the mask of comedy.

Focused as it is on the first years of the theatre, the book reveals nothing of the momentous events it has been concerned in over the years.

In the light of its continuing status — despite its discomfort — as the city’s principal concert hall — it is instructive to mention some giants of the musical world who have visited.

The degree of Honorary Doctor of Music was given there to both Joseph Haydn and George Frideric Handel who, though he declined to process, premiered his oratorio Athalia there before an audience of 3,700 in July 1733.

When Richard Strauss received the same degree, marking his 50th birthday in June 1914, students lined the streets outside to cheer this hero of the hour. Sad to think that so many of these will have perished in the conflict with his country that began two months later.