Mather’s Farmhouse, Barton Lane
Mather’s Farmhouse, which stands opposite the Black Boy at the start of Barton Lane, dates from the seventeenth century. It has an external chimney stack on each side and a stone-tile roof.
This farmhouse and it land was owned by Magdalen College until the late 1960s, and was sometimes known as Magdalen Farm. In 1673 Robert Pawling (an Oxford mercer who was Mayor of Oxford in 1679/80) was the tenant of this farm. He attended St Andrew’s Church, and became involved in a dispute about a pew which traditionally belonged to the farm. He was a Parliamentarian, and by June 1685 had moved permanently up to Headington, then a Puritan stronghold. Anthony Wood records how on Monday 22 June 1685 (during Monmouth’s rebellion):
… about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, Robert Pawling, late of Oxon, mercer, was brought under guard from his house at Hedington by command from the earl of Abendon, lord leivtenant of the county of Oxon, and committed prisoner to the Castle.
Pawling was still living here in 1707 at the time of the death of his wife Christian.
During the eighteenth century, the Revd Dr John Mather (President of Corpus Christi College from 1714 to 1748) and his wife and six surviving children are known to have lived in Headington, and it seems very likely that they lived here at Mather's Farm. Dr Mather took out a lease of Magdalen College property described in 1721 as "The Chief Farm in Headington" in 1732, 1739, and 1746.
John Mather died on 15 April 1748, and his will was proved at Oxford on 24 June. His widow Rebecca continued to live in Headington with her three unmarried daughters Henrietta, Elizabeth, and Catherine until her own death in Headington on 3 May 1767, renewing the lease on the farm there in 1753 and 1760.
The three Mather daughters, now middle-aged, continued to live in Headington, and the "Mrs Mather" named on the Magdalen College leases of 1767, 1774, 1781, 1788, and 1795 is probably Miss Henrietta Mather.
Henrietta died at Headington on 4 June 1800 and Elizabeth on 24 June 1801. Catherine Mather, the last of the unmarried sisters, remained in Headington (although probably not at the farm), and died there on 12 March 1807.
By the time of the Headington Enclosure Award of 1805 this farmhouse (not named) and its land was let out to Theophilus Wharton by Magdalen College. The following land was awarded to Wharton, and it seems likely that this was the extent of the farm, two-thirds of which was to the south of Barton Lane:
- Plot 90 (20 acres to the immediate east of the farmhouse)
- Plot 53 (26 acres of Between Towns Field, now the area occupied by Ash Grove and adjacent roads)
- Plot 38 (22 acres on the other side of the London Road immediately opposite Between Towns Field, which would.of course have been part of the same field before the London Road was cut through it in the late eighteenth century).
In 1850, the Headington Rate-Book of December shows that Mather’s Farmhouse (named thus) was occupied by William Scarlett, with the owner given as "the executors of Thomas Burrows", who was presumably a lessee of the college. The rateable value of the farm was then £166.13s.4d, and the size of the farm just over 112 acres (plus another 22 acres "in the Meadow" that Scarlett leased from William Graham). In the 1851 census William Scarlett is described as a farmer employing six men and farming 140 acres. This land covered the present Chestnut and Hawthorn Avenues and ran over towards Wick Farm. He was still there farming the land at the time of the 1861 census but by 1871 he was dead, and his widow and children were living in Woodman’s Villa in New High Street.
As a young man, Islip-born William Berry had been landlord of the White Hart from May 1855 to early 1862. He then moved to Mather's Farm with his first wife, Ann, and ran a bakery here. Ann died the following year, and the 1871 census shows him as a widower at the farm living with his 12-year-old niece, who was presumably keeping house for him: he is described as a Master Baker and the occupier of 20 acres, employing one man in each capacity, which implies that the farm had already been separated from the bulk of its lands.
In 1873 William Berry remarried, and he and his new wife had twelve children between 1874 and 1886;* but in 1888 he died, and his wife Mrs Sarah Berry was left to look after the bakery as well as twelve children ranging in age from two to fourteen. From 1898 she is described as "baker & butcher", and she would have been in charge of the bakery when a well-known postcard was made showing the farmhouse in about 1904. Mrs Berry retired in 1907 at the age of 60, and her eldest son William John Berry took over the bakery, while her second son, Harry Edward, became a butcher in Old High Street. Early in the First World War the family had to leave Mather’s Farm, and took themselves and their business to 1 St Andrew’s Road, just the other side of Larkin’s Lane. The redoubtable Mrs Berry survived until 1926, when she died at the age of 82.
Early in the First World War Jim Wheeler, who was already farming Mather’s Farm, moved into the farmhouse, reuniting it with its lands. The Berry family then moved across Larkin’s Lane to 1 St Andrew’s Road, where they built a new bakery in the back garden.
After the Second World War Mather’s Farmhouse was occupied by various members of Magdalen College. The college sold the building in the late 1960s.
* The couple had two boys — William John (1874) and Henry Edward (1875) — followed by nine girls in a row: Sarah Alice (1876), Elizabeth (1877), Mary (1878), Fanny Rosetta (1879), Alice Louise (1880), Edith Octavia (1882), Florence (1883), Mildred Eveline (1884), and Josephine (1885). Their last child was another boy: James Wilkins (1886).
Listed Building references: Farmhouse: 1485/56; Wall to Larkins’s Lane: 1485/56A