Orlando Jewitt and Headington
Thomas Orlando Sheldon Jewitt (1799–1869), the famous wood engraver usually known as Orlando Jewitt, came from Derbyshire to Oxford in the early 1830s and lived in Church House, Old Headington from 1838 until he moved to London in the mid-1850s.
Orlando (who was one of seventeen children) attracted other wood engravers to Old Headington, including members of his own artistic family. By the time of the 1841 census the following lived in Headington:
Church House, St Andrew’s Road
- Orlando Jewitt himself with his wife Phoebe and three children
- George Jewitt (Orlando’s brother), a letter-press printer
- Edward Bower (Orlando’s apprentice), a wood-engraver
A house in St Andrew’s Lane
- Arthur Jewitt (Orlando’s father, a widower), who is described as an artist, and Orlando’s sister Clara
- Theodore Jewitt (Orlando’s brother), a wood engraver who was later to marry Emma Knowles
- Llewellynn Jewitt (Orlando’s brother), a wood engraver, his wife Elizabeth and baby daughter,
Old High Street
- Henry Jewitt (Orlando’s brother), an "engraver on wood", and his wife Rebecca, sharing a house with a labourer’s family.
- John Heaviside, an "engraver on wood", lodging with the blacksmith in Old High Street
- William Reynolds, an engraver, living independently in Old High Street
Staying at the Britannia
- Henry Burrows, an engraver, presumably newly arrived.
This team of ten must have been responsible for most of the engraved pictures in Oxford at this time. All four Jewitt brothers had children baptised at St Andrew’s Church between 1842 and 1848.
When Orlando Jewitt drew and then engraved the above picture of St Andrew’s Church (published in 1842 in A Guide to the Architectural Antiquities in the Neighbourhood of Oxford), he could have been sitting at his own house opposite the church. He did fourteen other engravings to accompany the architectural description of the church, which he wrote himself.
Orlando was listed as one of ten men suitable to serve as a parish constable of Headington in 1844 and 1845, and in 1855 he was appointed Churchwarden of St Andrew’s Church.
By the time of the 1851 census, Orlando is shown as the employer of five men. These were probably:
- His nephew William Whatmough, living with Orlando’s father in St Andrew’s Lane
- W. P. Goward, lodging at the White Hart in St Andrew’s Road
- His brother Henry Jewitt, now with his own house at "the west end of the village"
- His brother Theodore Jewitt, now living in the parish of St Peter’s-in-the-East in Oxford but still baptising his children in Headington
- Henry Burrows, now settled on Headington Hill with his new wife Sarah and their children.
William Reynolds, who by 1851 had settled in Barton Manor with his new wife Martha Henrietta, is listed as a wood engraver in his own right in Headington directories at this time, and so presumably was no longer an employee of Orlando.
Orlando’s father Arthur died on his 80th birthday on 7 March 1852 and is buried at St Andrew’s Church. His brothers and other employees had disappeared en masse from Headington by the time of the 1861 census, suggesting that they moved to London with Orlando in 1857.
The following obituary of Orlando Jewitt, who died in London on 30 May 1869, was published in Jackson's Oxford Journal of 19 June 1869:
The picture on the left, of Joe Pullen’s Tree in Pullen’s Lane, Headington was engraved by Orlando Jewitt from an original drawing by W. A. Delamotte, and appeared in James Ingram’s Memorials of Oxford, published in three volumes between 1832 and 1836.
