6 St Andrew’s Lane
Now known as Pumpkin Cottage, this house dates from the seventeenth century. It was held under the Manor of Heddington, and is described in the early Court Rolls as "a messuage or tenement, yard, orchard, garden ground, backside and buildings".
John Clements conveyed the copyhold of this cottage to George Smith, carpenter, in 1758, when it was described as being "late in the occupation of Widow Bolt". Smith died in 1766, and the next year it was inherited by his daughter Martha and her husband Richard Pancutt. At this time it was occupied by John Snow.
Richard Pancutt died in 1803 and Pumpkin Cottage was inherited by his son, another Richard, who passed it on to his half sister, Martha, and her husband Robert Bateman, a carpenter, who lived in the house: they baptised nine children at St Andrew’s church between 1803 and 1818, and were still living in St Andrew’s Lane at the time of the 1841 census; and Robert was still there in 1851, a widower of 72 living with his 8-year-old granddaughter Eliza. The Headington Rent-Book of 1850 shows the house as both owned and occupied by Robert Bateman: its rateable value was then £6–10-0, and its gross estimated rental £9-0-0.
In 1852 Robert Bateman sold the house to John Bateman, a grocer of Oxford who may have been his first cousin, for £160. John lived in the house for only five years, as he died in 1857, and it was then let out to William Jeffs. It was inherited by John Thomas Bedford aka Bateman, the only surviving child of Sarah Bedford deceased.
In 1897 it was enfranchised for £4 by J. T. B. Bateman of 33 Ashbourne Grove, East Dulwich: it had been rented since 1890 by Walter Metcalfe, a young gardener’s labourer, at a rent of five shillings a week. The 1891 census shows him as a bachelor of 21, living in Pumpkin Cottage with his blind father, his charwoman mother, and two child boarders.
Above: Mrs Ellen Louch, who died at 6 St Andrew's Lane at the age of 80 in 1935. She was baptised at St Andrew's Church on 7 June 1854, the illegitimate daughter of Anne Gardiner. On 6 June 1876 she married the labourer Thomas Soanes at St Andrew's Church, and their son William was baptised there four months later. Just four months after his birth, Ellen's first husband committed suicide in the garden of his New High Street house. Ellen then married a young widower, the carpenter William Louch, at St Andrew's Church on 27 December 1879, and had another eight children. At the time of the 1891 census the Louches were living in New High Street , and in 1901 at Stafford Terrace in Old Headington.
Listed Building ref: 1485/819