Headington Lodge, Osler Road
White Lodge in Osler Road (above) is the south wing of the mansion that was known as Headington Lodge. The main part of the mansion to the north is now known as Sandy Lodge.
In the late 1700s the brewer Edward Tawney (1735–1800) built a "gentleman’s farmhouse" in the Croft (Osler Road did not exist until 1802). On his death in 1800 he left that farmhouse to his cousin’s daughter, Mrs Ann Wharton (née Tawney), with instructions that it should go to her eldest son Theophilus Wharton after her death. The Headington Enclosure Award map of 1805 shows that Mrs Wharton's house was on the site of White/Sandy Lodge.
That Enclosure Award of 1805 granted Theophilus Wharton (1778–1831) all the land to the east of Osler Road as far as the turning into the Croft, excluding the house owned by his mother:
One Plot of Land or ground numbered 63 containing five acres one rood and twenty eight perches situate in Pound Field bounded on the North by the allotment numbered 63(a) on part of the South East and on the North East by the House and premises of Mrs Wharton on the remaining part of the South East by the allotment numbered 62 [Headington House] on the South by the Road numbered I [London Road] and on the North West by the Road numbered VIII [Osler Road]
Theophilus Wharton inherited his mother's farmhouse on his mother's death in 1824, and lived in the farmhouse with his brother Bryan (1782–1839). Neither of the brothers married, and they converted the farmhouse into the regency villa it is today. It was originally known as Headington Lodge, and its main entrance was in Osler Road, where its own little lodge (or gatehouse) still stands to the south, beside Cuckoo Lane. The present house called Greenways is in part of what was Wharton's garden.
This detail from the 1899 map of Headington (right) shows Headington Lodge, with its garden stretching from the Croft to the north and Cuckoo Lane to the south. Its western boundary is Osler Road, and to the east is its next-door neighbour, Headington House.
Its former lodge (below) is shown in the south-west corner of the map: it is now 38 Osler Road.
On the death of Theophilus Wharton in 1831 Headington Lodge passed to his nephew (and Ann Wharton’s grandson), Mark Theophilus Morrell. On his death in 1842 it passed to his cousin, Charles Tawney. Charles (1780–1853) was a partner in the Hall & Tawney Brewery and had been Mayor of Oxford in 1837 and 1840. His town home was Brewery House in Paradise Street, Oxford, but he must have used this as his country retreat, as the Headington Rent-Book for December 1850 shows him as both owner and occupier at this time. Its rateable value was then £58.5s.0d, and its estimated extent just over 5 acres.
Charles Tawney died in 1853 and his wife in 1854, and their children, Henry Copland Tawney and Mrs Elizabeth Copland Fisher inherited the house.
Between 1861 and 1902 Headington Lodge was let out to various people: Mrs Williams (1861), the Misses Hillderson (1863), John Martin, a retired storekeeper from Portsmouth Dockyard (1871), George Crunwell (1875–6), Colonel (later Major General) John Desborough (while he rebuilt The Priory, 1877–1883), Frederick Evans (1890–95), and Mrs Burch (1896–7).
In 1881 the mansion was bought and then rented out by William Wootten-Wootten of Headington House. His widow gave it to their son Montague on his marriage in 1888, but initially he continued to live in St Giles. By the time of the 1901 census the whole house had become known as White Lodge rather than Headington Lodge, and Montague Wootten is listed there at the age of 48 with his wife Mary and three-year-old son Kenneth, looked after by six indoor servants, with his gardner living in the lodge. Eight years later, in 1909, Montague Wootten committed suicide in the house as a result of financial problems: he was a partner of Parsons, Thomson & Co. (Barclays) at the Old Bank in Oxford’s High Street.
Left: Reproduction Edwardian postcard of Headington Lodge available from Jeremy’s of Oxford
The house was leased by a Mrs Newall from 1910 to 1914, and then by Miss MacGregor, who founded Headington School here.
In 1920 it was bought from Montague Wootten-Wootten’s estate by Edwin J. Hall, who lived in Clifton House on the London Road and built the cinema in New High Street in his garden.
Hall divided it into the two separate houses it is today, naming them White Lodge and Sandy Lodge, and let them out to Walter Smith and Raymond Holmes respectively.
The novelist Elizabeth Bowen lived at White Lodge from 1960 to 1965, but is listed in directories under her husband’s name as Mrs. A. Cameron.
Listed Building references: White/Sandy Lodge: 1485/38; Wall to Osler Road: 1485/38A