Listed Building History: Wick Farm and well house
Wick Farm, near Barton (also known as Headington Wick) was already in existence in the thirteenth century. Its name suggests that it was probably a dairy farm: Stow Surv. 171 (1598): “In diuers countries, Dayrie houses or cottages, wherein they make butter and cheese, are vsually called Wickes.”)
In the seventeenth century Wick Farm was the second largest farm in the parish of Headington. On 17 November 1781, when it was available to let, an advertisement in Jackson’s Oxford Journal stated it was then about 250 acres.
Arthur Maling, one of James Murray’s assistants on the original Oxford English Dictionary project, annotated a slip for wick (in the sense meaning “farm”) with the comment that “Headington Wick is a farm-house between Headington & Elsfield”.
The present farmhouse (above, with its well house visible to the left) was built in the middle or late eighteenth century, and is Grade II listed. The barn behind the well house, and the gate piers and walls, are the same age and are listed structures.
In 1813 Theophilus and Brian Wharton, sons of apothecary Theophilus Wharton and his wife Ann, bought Wick Farm for the then huge sum of £9,900 and let it out. Theophilus died in 1831 and Bryan in 1839, and it was held by their executors and then passed to Mrs Emily Stone (1811–1891), the daughter of their sister Jane and James Morrell, the brewer of Headington Hill Hall. Emily held it from 1839 to 1891, leaving it to her niece Emily Alicia Morrell, who owned it from 1891 to 1938.
At the time of the 1841 census the lessee was William Eeley (20), who lived here with Mary Eeley (15) and a female servant and three agricultural labourers.
In the Headington rate book of 1850 the executors of Brian Wharton are still stated to be the owner of Wick Farm, and William Parker was the tenant farmer. It was then just over 202 acres in size, with a gross estimated rental of £248 and a rateable value of £237.
At the time of the 1851 census James Cross (30) was living at the farm with his wife Eliza (35), and in directories of 1854 and 1863 he is listed as bailiff at Wick Farm. In the 1871 census he and his wife are still listed at Wick farmhouse, and he is described as an “agricultural labourer foreman”; and in 1881, when his two nieces were living with them at the farmhouse, he is again described as a “farm bailiff”. It appears that William Parker or Parke was still the farmer, however, as he is listed as such in an 1876 directory.
In 1891 William Richard Knowles (26) was the farm bailiff, and he was living in the farmhouse with his wife Sarah. They were still there twenty years later in 1911.
The well house at Wick Farm
The above picture, taken in 1999, shows the farm’s impressive well house, which dates from about 1660. It is the only Headington building other than St Andrew’s Church and Headington Hill Hall to have a Grade II* listing.
Over the doorway is a lion mask, and a scroll pediment on brackets. Inside there are steps down to the well, which is now covered.
The postcard below shows the well-house in about 1918.
Farms needed vast quantities of water, and a well house held machinery (such as a donkey wheel or horse gin) for raising it.
Listed building references for Wick Farm
- Well house (SP50NE 5/3)
- Farmhouse (SP50NE 5/1)
- Barn (SP50NE 5/2)
- E. gate piers (SP50NE 5/4)
- W. gate piers (SP50NE 5/5)
