I get your drift, Babel--though maybe there's broader issues (as there'd be for any of us) than style alone--y'know, sociology, usage, even (and I don't mean this dismissively) personal pathology? Locally speaking, it'd be like the queasy vibes one might get from Olde Unionville or the Distillery District or anyplace touristy-central-coreish. Something feels strangely contrived, strained, dead-endy--or excessively highlighting said qualities. And what could be more strained (or compounding of existing strained-ness) than a school trip?
I know; I've been through that too, w/family, w/school, w/friends. Shows like "The Simpsons" have a field day with it. Past architectural-mag critics of the twee of "Townscape" have had a field day with it. Yes, it was and is, in a sense, limited and retrogressive, this c19 Victorian Gothic. But once we take a more distant and synthetic viewpoint, dead ends don't look so dead--especially if we take the meta-viewpoint that anything can be a dead end, if you let it.
So why let it? Hundreds of dead ends = life;-)
Maybe the best thing in this case would have been a more protracted stay in Oxford with a touch of the anti-tourist--y'know, even venturing into the where-fools-fear-to-tread of East Oxford, etc, once the inevitable boredom w/the core sets in. (That's how I'd do it;-))