William Orchard and Headington
William Orchard (d.1504) was a master mason and citizen of Oxford. He was the chief (possibly the only) architect of Oxford between 1460 and 1500. From 1468 Orchard was in charge of the building of Magdalen College, and is believed to have built the roof of the Divinity School, where five of the vault-bosses have the initials "WO" carved on them.
Orchard owned a quarry at Headington and supplied stone to the colleges of Oxford, and while building Magdalen College lived in college property in Barton in "a lyttel house with an orchard called the Pale and three acres of land". This was probably on the site of Barton End at the end of Barton Road (within easy reach of the Magdalen Pit in the days when Headington was not bisected by the London Road). By the 1470s and until the 1490s, he was married to Agnes, and they had a son, John, who was a chorister at Magdalen College and studied there in 1485–7, taking a BCL degree.
In 1472 Orchard ("aliter Mason de Oxonia") and Agnes his wife were granted a lease of the PIke Inn in Oxford by Balliol College.
The foundation stone of Magdalen was laid on 5 May 1474, and the buildings were occupied in 1480.
In 1484 Orchard seems to have left Headington: a lease of 24 April that year granted to John Atkyns of Hedyngton and his assigns all Orchard’s lands, "arable and inarable, in the field of Berton in the demesne of Hydyngton" for ten years. Similarly on 21 August 1490 he leased to William Fermour "a mese lying in the town of Hedyngton", in the west end of the same, late in the hands of John Jenyns, with all the lands, pastures and meadows, excepting the grove called "Hasyll Grove" for five years. Jenyns was to have the carriage of the stone from the Quarry at a rent of 13s 4d.
The portion of Orchard’s draft will of 1490 relating to his property in Headington reads as follows:
I will, gyfe & grant after my dissese & Agnes my wif that my ferme place of Edyngton, named sumtyme Jenyns Place be charged to pay oute of the same unto the feliship of Magdallyn College of Oxford foresayd to pray for my soull vis. viiid. ons in the yere.... Item I gef & grant that my sone John the younger have after my dicese & Agnes my wif my place at Hedyngton named ther Jenyns Place with 11 acres & a dim. of Querri of ston ther, to have & to hold the forsaid place with the 11 acres & a dim. of querry to the forsaid John & his heirs for evermore.... Item I will, gief & grant unto my doughter Anne my house with the appertinance in Hedyngton named Hils house, to have & to hold the house with the appertinance unto the said Anne to her heirs for evermore.
In the event, his wife Agnes predeceased him, and apparently all their children as well. He married again, and in his final will dated 21 January 1503/4 he left his second wife, Katherine, "a grove lying at Heddyngton townys end". (Grove here does not mean a wood, but a piece of enclosed land, possibly his quarry.) Orchard appears to have had a second son called John by his new wife.
By his request Orchard was buried in St Frideswide’s Church (where he had probably been responsible for the building of the vault of the choir and the cloisters).
William Orchard’s name was given to a new Close in Old Headington in the 1960s.
Note that there is a
much fuller entry on William Orchard
in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography