Linden House School, Headington
Linden House in Old High Street (the tall building on the left of this postcard) is now known as the Priory. It was originally a private house. From at least 1850 to 1854, when it was owned by George Baker Ballachey of Bury Knowle House, it was occupied by William Butler, a magistrate and alderman and brother-in-law of the Mrs Butler who ran a girls' school in the Manor House in the 1840s.
Linden House School was a boys' school, and opened in January 1859 by William Richard Hurst. The following advertisement appeared in Jackson's Oxford Journal for 18 December 1858:
The school was so successful in its first year that Hurst took over Linden Cottages, three cottages that can be seen in the above picture just to the north of the main house. (Linden Cottages were demolished in 1908 and replaced by the current two cottages with that name.) The cottages were used for boarders, allowing numbers to rise to 50, as this advertisement that appeared in Jackson's Oxford Journal for 24 December 1859 shows:
Despite the above asseveration that he would limit the school to 50 pupils, Jackson's Oxford Journal for 23 February 1861 reports that there were 70 boys at the school of whom 45 had joined its Cadet Rifle Corps. Of these 70, about 50 must have been days boys, as the 1861 census shows 21 boarders aged between 9 and 17, most of whom came from Oxford and the surrounding area. Hurst (32) lived on the premises with his wife, two assistant masters called Sherlock Cranwell and John Leach, and three servants.
On 16July 1864 Hurst advertised in Jackson's Oxford Journal that in the ensuing term he planned to move the school to extensive premises at Littlemore, and on 13 August 1864 the following advertisement appeared:
In an article on the history of the British Workman building in Old High Street, the Headington Parish Magazine of February 1881 states that the Revd John Robinson in 1864 "was negotiating for some rooms in the High Street, since turned into three cottages, but which had then been used as a Boys' School and Class Rooms". He did not get them, and it seems possible that Linden House was bought by the Revd John William Augustus Taylor, founder of the much more prestigious Rookery School, because from 1868 to 1874 it was occupied by one of its masters, Henry Franklin, described in the 1871 census as “Teacher (Preparatory School for Harrow, Eton, &c.)”, and his wife and seven children. (Franklin had been the Master of Headington National School until the end of 1867, living in the school house on the London Road.)