History of Headington’s Post Offices
This building at 142–144 London Road was built as a pair of private houses in 1926. In 1942 the house on the right was taken over as Headington’s central post office, and in the 1950s it expanded into the house on the left, where, over 60 years later, it is still going strong.
Headington’s first post office in the 1840s was in Old High Street, and initially the villagers of New Headington and Quarry also had to go there to purchase their stamps. James Waring (who was also the Master of the Free School in Quarry) is listed in directories as sub-postmaster in Old High Street in 1847, and as postmaster thereafter until his death at the age of 87 in 1874. His daughter Jane is listed as a postmistress in the 1861 census, and is seems likely that as he became older she and subsequently other younger people actually did most of the work. When he died in 1874 the post office was taken over by James Rudd, a coachman servant, who also lived in Old High Street. He ran it in the grocer’s shop on the corner of Old High Street and St Andrew’s Road until 1915, when bigger premises became necessary.
Headington’s first central Post Office, which could offer advanced services such as the telegraph, opened in a prestigious new building on the central corner site of the present Budgen Express shop in 1915, and James Rudd moved from Old Headington Post Office to be sub-postmaster there. It was described in directories as a "Post and Money Order Office, Telegraph Office, Savings Bank, Public Telephone & Express Delivery & Annunity & Insurance Office." It remained in this building on the corner of Windmill Road until 1934, when it moved across the road to the present 117 London Road (now Annie Sloan), where it stayed for just eight years.
In 1942 it crossed back again to 142 London Road (on the right of the photograph above), and from this date was a Crown Post Office with a postmaster rather than a sub-postmaster. In the 1950s expanded to take over the other private house next door at 144; but in 1994, it retreated into 144 on the left.
The other two Headington villages had to use the post office in Old Headington for many years, but eventually got their own post offices:
- New Headington had a post office (known as Highfield Post Office) at the grocer’s shop at 74 Lime Walk (NW corner of the crossroads) from about 1890 to 1946. It then moved to the former dairy in All Saints Road, where it remained until 1984
- Quarry originally just had a letter-box in the wall of the Free School beside the Chequers. In 1881 its first post office was opened. It transferred to the Yews in Quarry High Street in 1882, but in 1892 moved back to Beaumont Road, where it remained until 1962.
Headington sorting office (above) opened at the top of Lime Walk in the 1950s and closed in 2005