Barton Manor, 7 Barton Village Road
Barton Manor is this tall, seventeenth-century building in Barton Village Road. It is built of ashlar, and has moulded eaves and cornice and three original attic dormers with gables. The west side was refronted in the late eighteenth century. Inside is a late-seventeenth-century staircase.
In 1759 it was offered for sale as follows:
To be LETT or SOLD,
At Barton, two Miles from Oxford;
A Small HOUSE, remarkable for its healthy and pleasant Situation, with a large Garden planted with the best Wall-Fruit, a Stable, Coach-House, and all Conveniences fit for a Gentleman’s Family
Enquire of Lady Boyce in Oxford, or John Oliver at Heddington Quarry
The Headington Rate Book of 1850 shows that Barton Manor was then owned by a Mr Herbert and let out to William Reynolds, the wood-engraver who collaborated with Orlando Jewitt. Its rateable value was then £7–10s, and its gross estimated rental £10. Reynolds is listed in the 1851 census as living at Barton Manor with his wife Martha Henrietta. She was the daughter of local landowner William Mott and had inherited a number of cottages in Barton Village Road. With them lived their eldest son, five-year-old son George, and one servant. George’s two younger siblings had already died at Barton Manor (William John aged two in 1849 and Martha Anne aged 7 months in 1850); and young George himself was to die there in 1855 when he was nine, allegedly after drinking water from the Bayswater Brook. Shortly after the census, the family moved to London.
By the time of the 1871 census, the house was occupied by James Hedges, a master butcher, and his wife Emma: they were probably also the owners. By the next census in 1881, James Hedges had remarried: his new wife, Annie Pether Hedges, had a 12-year-old daughter from her first marriage, Vashti de Montfort Wellborne.
James Hedges died in 1925, Vashti in 1930, and Mrs Annie Pether Hedges in December 1933. She left Barton Manor (which was numbered 9 Barton Village Road until renumbering in the 1950s) to her nephew, Mr Pether of Stow Farm. He left it to Miss Iris Munro, and when she died in about 1946, she left it to her nephew, Graham H. Pollard. He lived there for about thirty years, then sold it to Hall’s Brewery.
Listed Building references: Manor: 1485/53; Garden wall: 1485/53A