33–34 Cornmarket
.
These two shops shops have been united since the 1940s. In 1981 the British Shoe Corporation put in the present shop front.
No. 33
Henry Alden, the founder of the Alden Press printing firm, opened his bookshop in 1832, and No. 33 is listed in a 1839 directory as his shop. Around the 1850s (perhaps in 1853 when the old inn next-door to the north was rebuilt) he moved to 35 Cornmarket Street two doors down to the south.
Henry Taunt had his photographer’s shop here in the 1860s.
George Bateman the optician started his business in this shop.
No. 34
No. 34 on the left replaced the right-hand side of the eighteenth-century stone house at No. 35 to the south in the early twentieth century.
The baker Thomas Grubb had his shop here from c.1860 to c.1940, and suffered in the bread riots of 1867. The Oxford Chronicle of 16 November that year reports that:
… an immense crowd, numbering about 600 or 800 men and boys, with a sprinkling of women, rushed along Cornmarket Street to the shop of Alderman Grubb, baker, amidst hooting and yelling and cries of ‘We’ll have our rights’. We want cheap bead’; etc. The shop was, of course, closed; but the upper windows were speedily riddled with stones and threats of firing his premises were made.
In the Censuses
1841
No 33 and/or 34 is occupied by the bookseller Henry Alden (30) and Elizabeth (24), Henry (5), Edward (3), and Sarah (1). An apprentice and an independent person also live with them, and they have two female servants.
1851
No. 33: Described as “house of business, not slept in” (= Henry Alden’s book shop).
No. 34: The widowed wine merchant Jane Steane is living here with her son James (22), daughter Sarah (17), and one female servant.
1861
No. 33: Martin Coles (27), a hairdresser and dealer in fancy goods, is living here with his wife Caroline (29) and daughter Emily (1).
No. 34: Thomas Randle Grubb (24), a baker and corn dealer, is living here with his wife Sarah (30) and his children Thomas (5) and Elizabeth (6 months). They have one female servant.
1881
No. 33: Described as “uninhabited”.
No. 34: Sarah Grubb (51) is now a widow, and lives here with her son Thomas (25), who is described as a corn dealer, her daughter Sarah (17) and one female servant.
Occupants of 33 and 34 Cornmarket listed in directories etc. |
||
Date |
No. 34 (left) | No. 33 (right) |
1839–1851 |
Henry Alden |
Samuel Steane, Wine merchant |
1852 |
J. Steane |
T. Grubb |
1861–1867 |
Thomas Grubb |
Martin Coles |
1872 |
Henry W. Taunt |
|
1880 |
J. Banner |
|
1890 |
Mrs A. E. Solloway |
|
1899–1902 |
Walter Blackall |
|
1911–1914 |
Edwin Saunders |
|
1921–1936 |
George Bateman & Co. |
|
1945–1972 |
Dolcis Shoe Co, Boot makers |
|
1973–1976 |
Manfield & Sons Ltd, Bootmakers |
|
1981 |
British Shoe Corporation |
|
By 2007–2010 |
Free Spirit |
|
2011 |
Pandora |
|
Old pictures on other websites and in books
For a drawing from the Police Review showing Grubb’s shop being attacked by rioters in November 1867, see Malcolm Graham, Images of Victorian Oxford, page 147.
West side of Cornmarket in c.1905, showing No. 34 (with the sunblind on the left) when it was still part of the eighteenth-century house to the north.