Stoke House, Stoke Place
Stoke House was built in 1883, but its core is probably a seventeenth-century cottage. The four neighbouring cottages to the south, built in 1885, were originally known as "Rookery Cottages"; but in 1929 the whole lane was named Stoke Place after this house
The Revd John William Augustus Taylor who lived in the Rookery (now Ruskin Hall) also owned the land this side of the lane, and in 1883 he built this smaller house for his retirement. He named it Stoke, after Stoke near Plymouth, Devon where his late wife, Jane Mould, had been born and where they had married. He only lived in this house for three years, as he died in 1886.
Taylor’s daughter Sarah and her husband Robert Henry Dockray then inherited this house. (The 1881 census showed Dockray as a bachelor teacher of 37, working under his future father-in-law at the Rookery School and lodging with a gardener and his family in Rookery Cottages; soon afterwards he married Miss Sarah Mary Louisa Taylor, also aged 37.) In the 1881 census and thereafter, Sarah is described as a painter in oils, and she apparently often exhibited her work at the Royal Academy (as her grandmother, Maria Spilsbury Taylor, had done before her). The Dockrays lived at the house until about 1914.
From 1915 to 1955 the house was occupied by Major William Lauriston Melville Lee (1865–1955). He was the author of A History of the Police in England (published in 1901), and was the brother of Lord Lee of Fareham, who donated Chequers to the nation. Major Melville-Lee’s son, Lt-Col. Rupert H. Melville Lee, married and remained at Stoke with his father, continuing to live there until he moved to Malta in 1965. The house originally had a bigger estate than it does today, but the Melville-Lees sold much of its land, so that other houses were built in Stoke Place. They also owned land in other parts of Headington.
Stoke House was sold to Ruskin College in 1965.
Footnote: Dr Nicholas Hiley of the University of Kent reports that he is writing a book about PMS2 (a very secret branch of MI5 set up in 1916 to spy on the British labour movement). Apparently Major William Lauriston Melville Lee was a secret agent in a branch of PMS2 which in 1917 claimed to have discovered a plot to murder the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. Three people tried for this plot in the Central Criminal Court were imprisoned – even though it had been fabricated by one of Major Melville Lee’s agents....
When PMS2 was closed down in 1917 (its undercover methods being considered too provocative), it appears that Lee was sent into retirement at Stoke House, Headington, where he remained for the rest of his life. He seems to have maintained his links with MI5 while in Headington, and in 1917 he established and edited a journal called Industrial Peace, which circulated information on left-wing political organizations and individuals: this was printed in Oxford, and ran until 1928.
Dr Hiley would be very interested in contacting any surviving members of the Melville Lee family: please E-mail the Webmaster if you can help.
Listed Building reference: 1485/50