A ground-breaking ceremony yesterday marked the start of building work at the new city-centre quarter being created on Oxford’s former Radcliffe Infirmary site.

The site will provide Oxford University with a new £500m campus on the ten-acre site bordered by Woodstock Road, Somerville College, Walton Street and Green Templeton College.

But the first construction on the landmark Radcliffe Observatory Quarter development will be new accommodation blocks for Somerville College, providing 68 en-suite bedrooms.

Dame Fiona Caldicott, the principal of Somerville, was due to break the ground at the ceremony at the controls of JCB digger, with the event attended by members of the college’s governing body.

The Somerville buildings are being built on the southern perimeter of the new city quarter.

Dame Fiona said; “The new Somerville buildings will be a the centre of the university, providing first-class facilities for students.

“It’s a really important development for the college, benefiting our students as well as helping to secure our future financially.

“It also means that we will have a magnificent view of the Radcliffe Observatory from Somerville’s quad.”

Niall McLaughlin, architect of the Somerville building, said: “The important thing about this building, more than anything else, is that it’s going to open Somerville College out, to what will be a very important new part of the city of Oxford, and it’s going to put Somerville College effectively at the centre.

“It’s as though the college was a room that’s making a new window — a window that’s overlooking a very important part of the city.”

The Radcliffe Observatory Quarter will provide the university with new teaching and research space.

A humanities building with an underground library and a five-storey mathematics institute, together costing £200m, will form the centrepieces of the site.

This first phase of the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter development is expected to be completed by 2013.

Later phases are planned for land next to Walton Street.

A series of small streets are also proposed between Woodstock Road and Walton Street.

The new Somerville accommodation block should be completed by September 2011.