Bury Knowle House
List entry for Bury Knowle House: 1123722
List entry for Bury Knowle House boundary wall: 1369406
Prior to 1885 this house does not appear to have had a name and was known as Joseph Lock's Mansion. From 1885 to 1895 it was called Brocklehurst; from 1895 to 1889 The Beeches; and since 1889 it has been Bury Knowle House. It was occupied by five families between c.1800 and 1930.
1. From c.1800 to 1885: Sir Joseph Lock and his wife Elizabeth and
his daughter Maria and her husband George Baker Ballachey
The new London turnpike road built in the late eighteenth century made Headington, which until then had been rather inaccessible, an ideal place for the gentry of Oxford to build their country retreats. In about 1800 Bury Knowle House was built for Joseph Lock (1760–1844), an Oxford goldsmith and banker of All Saints Parish in Oxford who was Mayor of Oxford in 1813 and 1829.
In about 1802 Lock erected a stone wall around his house and parkland in such a way that it formed a barrier across the footpath that runs behind the Old High Street car park. As this was then the coffin route from the outlying hamlet of Headington Quarry to St Andrew’s Church, it made him very unpopular with the people of Quarry. In 1809 he leased the coach-house and stables of the Hermitage, and these later became part of the growing Bury Knowle estate.
The 1804 Enclosure Award granted him about 17 acres of land in central Headington, comprising Plot 28 (the north-east end of Windmill Road), Plot 58 (the south-east corner of Old High Street), and Plots 54, 55, 57, and 57a (roughly comprising the present park). Plot 57, the part of the park between the house and London Road, is described thus:
And to and for the said Joseph Lock in lieu of his copyhold eighteen acres of arable land held under the Manor of Headington (except the right of Common belonging to the said eighteen acres of land) also purchased by him of and from the said John Owen One Plot of Land or Ground numbered 57 containing six acres one rood and four perches situate in Sheepcut Furlong bounded on the North by the Mansion House and premises of the said Joseph Lock on part of the North East by an Allotment numbered 54 on parts of the South East by the Allotment numbered 55 and a cottage and garden belonging to the said Joseph Lock on the south by the road numbered I and on the North West by the Allotment numbered 57(a)
It appears that Joseph Lock may have let out the mansion house that later became known as Bury Knowle, as when this advertisement appeared in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 25 February 1815, with particulars available from him in Oxford:
TO be LET, at Midsummer (or a tenant may be accommodated at Lady Day next)— All those PREMISES, now in the occupation of Mr. Kirtland, and formerly of Mrs. White, Sir Digby Mackworth, the Countess of Rothes, Lord Dorchester, and the Bishop of Norwich, situate in the village of Headington, with excellent Garden Ground, well stocked with Walnut and other Fruit Trees; a Coach house, four-stall Stable, and a Close of good Pasture Land.
The diaries of Mary Latimer of Headington House reveal that the Sir Joseph and his family were living at Bury Knowle House in the 1820s; but in his latter years (and perhaps ever since his wife’s death in 1822), Sir Joseph lived in his town house in All Saints parish, Oxford. At the time of the 1841 census his son Edward Lock was living in Bury Knowle House with his family, but he must have moved out before his sister Maria’s marriage on 11 May 1843 to George Baker Ballachey, because the diaries of John Hill (Vice-Principal of St Edmund Hall, whose son married Ballachey’s daughter by his first marriage) show that the Ballacheys were already entertaining there in August of that year.
Sir Joseph Lock died on 16 January 1844 at the age of 83, and his property was divided between his two surviving children, with Edward Lock inheriting the Oxford house and Maria Lock (who had been Mrs Ballachey since May 1843) all the Headington property and land. Edward did not remain in Oxford and at the time of his son’s marriage in October 1859 he was living at Halson Lodge near Taunton, but Maria Ballachey took over what was to become Bury Knowle House. .
Mrs Ballachey often allowed the park to be used for worthy events such as annual school treats and temperance fetes: for example on 24 July 1845 the Vice-Chancellor of the University and the Principal of St Edmund Hall, no less, helped the Ballacheys carve roast beef and mutton in the field in front of the house, and this was served with plum pudding to 36 parishioners of Headington aged above 60. Many eminent people were entertained inside Bury Knowle House: for example on 19 June 1848 (the day the National School was opened and the foundation stone of the church at Headington Quarry laid), the Bishop of Oxford, the Provost of Worcester, and the Warden of New College were among those who dined there.
Right: This drawing of the Lodge to Bury Knowle House was sketched in 1868 by Miss Mary Eliza Ballachey (later a pupil of John Ruskin), who labelled it “The Lodge, Grandmama’s House, Headington”.
This pretty cottage near the London Road was on the site of the present public conveniences.
After Mrs Ballachey’s death in 1884, Bury Knowle House was inherited by her brother’s son, Edward Seppings Lock. He had not yet come of age, and her representative placed the following advertisement in Jackson’s Oxford Journal on 12 April 1884:
HEADINGTON, NEAR OXFORD. NOTICE OF THE SALE OF
Excellent Antique and Modern HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE, Carpets, Bedding, &c.; Minerals, Shells, and Curiosities; Library of BOOKS, Engravings, Old China, Old Needlework, &c.; Kitchen Requisites, China, Glass, capital BROUGHAM, and a large quantity of Miscellaneous Effects.
More details were given in a notice published on 26 April 1884 advertising a forthcoming three-day auction on the premises by Mallam's, stating that the sale included “the whole of the furniture of the dining, drawing, and morning room, and library, as well as the contents of 6 bed rooms and 4 attics”.
Then on 10 May 1884:
TO BE LET. The excellent COUNTRY RESIDENCE at Headington, lately occupied by Mrs Ballachey.
The house was sold the following year, ending the connection with the Lock family. .
2. 1885 to 1895: Edward Brocklehurst Fielden and his wife Mary
Edward Brocklehurst Fielden (1857–1942) bought the house from the Locks in 1885. He was a civil engineer who from 1882 had been employed by the Thames Conservancy and was lodging in Oxford, but his circumstances changed much for the better in 1884 when he married Mary Knowles, the daughter of a wealthy colliery proprietor in Wigan. He also bought a farm adjacent to Bury Knowle. He was a Yorkshireman descended from the Fielden spinning dynasty and became an Oxfordshire Justice of the Peace, and from 1887 to 1894 he was Master of the South Oxfordshire Foxhounds. He named the house Brocklehurst (presumably after his mother, Ellen Brocklehurst of Macclesfield), and his four children were born there and baptised at St Andrew’s Church between May 1886 and June 1893.
To accommodate them (and his large retinue of six indoor female servants and a butler), he added the large rear wing and conservatory.
From 1888 he had been involved in managing the family business in Todmorden, Yorkshire, and in 1894 he moved up to Shropshire, first renting Longford Hall and then in 1895 buying Condover Hall from the Cholmondeleys for £120,000. Fielden put Bury Knowle House up for sale with Franklin & Jones, who published the following notice about its forthcoming public auction on 10 November 1894 at the Clarendon Hotel in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 13 October:
OLD HEADINGTON, Near to the City of Oxford.
A HIGHLY DESIRABLE AND ATTRACTIVE FREEHOLD RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY,
Situate at Old Headington—a pleasant distance of about 1½ miles from the City of Oxford, in a district proverbial for its exceedingly healthy character, and comprising a substantially-built and well-arranged
FAMILY RESIDENCE,
consisting, briefly, of Entrance and Inner Halls, 4 Reception Rooms, 15 Bed and Dressing Rooms, 2 Attics, Still Room, Bath Room, and all the necessary Cellarage and Domestic Offices, approached by a Carriage Drive, with Entrance Lodge, excellent Stabling for 11 Horses, with Coach-house, Saddle-room, and Groom's Apartments; capital Kitchen Garden, with Greenhouse, and a well-arranged Fernery in the rear, the whole surrounded by a small Park, Pleasure Grounds, Tennis Courts, and Paddocks of excellent Pasture, lying in a ring fence, and extending to an area of 19A. 2R. 0P., well studded with Timber of a most ornamental description, and from its unique character and unrivalled position presenting an opportunity for the acquisition of a first-class Residence in the best part of the environs of the University and City of Oxford.
3. 1895 to 1899: Colonel Howard Kingscote and his wife Georgiana
In about 1895 Colonel Howard Kingscote, the Commander of Cowley Barracks, moved into Bury Knowle House with his notorious wife Georgiana Kingscote, a novelist who wrote under the pen-name of Lucas Cleeve, and they named it The Beeches. Unfortunately four years later the colonel was made bankrupt by his extravagant wife, and all the contents of the house were auctioned in situ in July 1899. The sale catalogue gives a wonderful picture of life in Bury Knowle House in the late nineteenth century.
The house was then advertised for sale as “a spacious Family Residence, with stabling, lodge, and farmery, and about 19 acres of land, with long frontages”.
Above: Map showing the extent of Bury Knowle House and its park in 1899. The London Road lodge
is marled, and a carriage road lined by trees runs from it parallel to the old funeral path on
the other side of the western wall and then encircles the house to reach the stables.
There was no piped water in Headington then, and the pump for the house marked P can be
seen behind the house, and the one for the stables is near the coach house
4. 1899 to 1923: Major Charles Miskin Laing and his wife Etheldreda
Major Charles Miskin Laing (1863–1939) of 6 Rawlinson Road, north Oxford, who was a barrister, bought the house in 1899 for £5,000 and renamed it Bury Knowle.
Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 13 January 1900 reported that Messrs Hill, Upton & Co of George Street installed “a complete electric light plant, with engine, dynamo, and accumulators at Bury Knowle, for C. M. Laing, Esq.”
The 1901 census shows Charles (38), described as a barrister-at-law, and Etheldreda (28) living at Bury Knowle House and their three-year-old daughter Janet. They had five indoor servants living with them in the house, and a gardener living at the lodge on the London Road.
His wife Etheldreda Janet Laing, née Winkfield had her own darkroom at Bury Knowle House, and in 1908 she took photographs of her two young daughters in its garden: examples include Two girls on a balcony, Girl with a parasol sitting on a bench; Two girls together in a garden; Girl with a bunch of flowers.
The 1911 census shows the Laings living in the house, which had 24 rooms, with their two daughters, a governess, and five servants. They can be seen again in the 1921 census, now with six servants.
They moved out in about 1923.
5. 1926 to 1930: Henry Mark Beaufoy and his wife Gwendolyn
Henry Mark Beaufoy was the last private person to live in Bury Knowle House. Born in Wiltshire in 1916 and educated at Eton and Cambridge, he was the son of Mark Hanbury Beaufoy, a wealthy vinegar manufacturer whose main residence and factory were in South Lambeth but who built Coombe House near Shaftesbury as a country retreat. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries his family business held the monopoly of supplying vinegar to the Royal Navy, who used it for preserving meat on ships. On his father's death in 1922 Henry Mark Beaufoy became the Chairman of of Beaufoy & Co.
Beaufoy's first home in Oxfordshire was Elmthorpe in Temple Cowley, and he can be seen there in the 1921 census with his wife Gwendolyn and their four servants. Iin 1926 he moved to Bury Knowle House with his wife and his daughter Prue (who was born in Portsmouth in 1917 and became Mrs Guild in 1940). Mrs Henry Beaufoy is immortalized in the foundation stone of the new building of St Andrew’s School, which she laid in 1928.
In 1930 Henry Beaufoy sold Bury Knowle House, together with its large park, to the City Council and moved to Hill House in Steeple Aston. He became Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1944, and died in 1955.
Oxford City Council has owned Bury Knowle House and its park since June 1930. The baby clinic moved here from the British Workman and the public park opened here in 1932, and Bury Knowle Library (rechristened Headington Library in 1999) opened in 1934. Oxfordshire County Council now rents the ground floor of the house from the city council and continues to use it as a public library.
The premises are divided up thus in the Leases and Tenancies book of Oxford City Council in 1933:
- Branch Library: Library Committee, £180 p.a. on a yearly term
- Clinic (Infant Welfare): Public Health Committee, £130 p.a. on a yearly term
- Stables: Miss J. B. Turner: £39 p.a. on a quarterly term
- Stable, pig-sties, greenhouses, & kitchen gardens: G. Mold: £26 p.a., for three years from 29 September 1933
- Flat (Lower): J. J. Pullein: £65 p.a., on a quarterly term
- Flat (Upper): D. M. Gregory: £65 p.a. on a quarterly term
See also: Rhona Walker, “Bury Knowle House in context: its history, design, and architecture”, Oxoniensia 72 (2007), pp. 37–54
Bury Knowle outbuildings
(Coach house, barn, and stables)
