35 Cornmarket
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This is the remaining half of an eighteenth-century stone house, and is Grade II listed. It stands on the site of the old Bocardo gaol.
The bootmaker Edwin Elliott was here before moving to 30 Cornmarket later in the 1850s.
Henry Alden moved from 33 Cornmarket to this shop in the 1850s (perhaps in 1853), and the Alden Press was here for about seventy years.
The premises became a restaurant when the Wimpy Bar opened here in 1970. The present shop front was put in for Kentucky Fried Chicken in 2003.
In the Censuses
1841
The mercer William Last (30) is living here with three milliners: Mary Anne Last (20), Harriet Adams (20), and Emma Walker (20). They have one female servant.
1851
Edwin Elliott (26), a boot & shoe maker employing 12 men, is living here over the shop with his wife Matilda (29) and his apprentice Albert Woodbridge (16) and one female servant.
1861
Henry Alden (51), the printer-stationer and bookseller, is living over his shop with his wife Elizabeth (44) and children Edward (22) and Sarah (20) who are a bookseller’s assistants; Elizabeth (17); George and James (15); Ebenezer (11); Anne; Constance (4). The family has one servant.
1881
No. 35 is listed as “uninhabited”.
Occupants of 35 Cornmarket listed in directories etc. |
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1839 |
Stephen Haynes, Boot & shoemaker |
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1841 |
William Last, Milliner |
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1846 |
Samuel Tester, Fishmonger |
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1851 |
Edwin Elliott, Boot & shoe maker |
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1867–1928 |
Henry Alden, Printer, bookseller, stationer and music seller, depot of British and Foreign Bible Society and English and Foreign Library Co. Ltd Alden & Co., Printers, publishers, stationers & booksellers by 1890 In 1911, “The Isis (Alden & Co. Limited, printers, booksellers &c)” is added |
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1932–1947 |
William Howe Nurse, manufacturing furrier Nurse the furrier by 1947 |
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1952–1968 |
Oxford & District Co-operative Society (also next door at 36A) This part of the shop is described as “Gowns” from 1954, and was separate from 36A until 1964, when the two shops together were “Sports outfitters, toys, prams; and from 1966 “Jewellers, outfitters, toys” |
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1970–1976 |
Wimpy Bar restaurant |
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By 2003– |
Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) |
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Old pictures on other websites and in books
For a photograph of Alden & Co’s shop at 35 Cornmarket, see Michael L. Turner and David Vaisey, Oxford Shops and Shopping, p. 60, illustration 140. This shows that the upstairs part of the shop was a show room.
West side of Cornmarket in c.1905, showing Alden’s shop with a large sign third from the left.