15: Whittard’s Teas & Coffees
Nos. 13–16 High Street were built in 1773–4 by John Gwynn to form the frontage to the new covered market, and were known as "New Parade". There is an avenue into the market in the centre of this group between Nos. 14 and 15, and another one each side. No. 15 is Grade II listed (ref. 1485/310).
After No. 15 was rebuilt in 1774, it was owned by William Jones, a goldsmith in the High. His father Thomas (died 1747) and his mother Elizabeth (died 1773) had been fishmongers, and his four spinster sisters, Anne, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Jane continued to run the family business from this shop. Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 7 November 1788 reported:
Died, after a short illness Mrs [sic] Anne Jones, eldest daughter of the late Mrs Elizabeth Jones of Oxford, fishmonger, by whom in partnership with three sisters the business has been carried on, and is intended to be continued by the survivors.
A fifth sister, Mary Jones (1741–1815) worked for William Jackson, the founder and proprietor of Jackson’s Oxford Journal, and inherited most of his estate.
Mary left this shop to her niece Elizabeth Latimer and her husband Edward. He lived at Headington House and was a wine merchant at No. 11 High Street during the first half of the nineteenth century. When he died in 1845, he bequeathed the rental of No 15 to his daughter Jane Latimer, with instructions that the shop should be sold after her death. She died in 1872.
At the time of the 1851 census Levi Greatbatch, the glass and china dealer here, lived upstairs with his wife and five children, two general servants, and two lodgers (undergraduate brothers at Trinity College). (Arthur Mitchell Greatbatch, who was to take over the business after his father’s death in 1903, was not yet born.) By 1880 Levi Greatbatch was living at the Cedars in Park Town.
| Occupiers of the present shop at 15 High Street | |
| 1774–c1788+ | Jones family Fishmongers |
| 1846 | William
Loder China & glass dealer |
| By 1851–1925 | Greatbatch Glass & china dealer Levi Greatbatch until 1903; Arthur Mitchell Greatbatch; 1904–1910 Greatbatch & Co. Ltd, 1910–1925 |
| 1927–1971 | Webbers
(part of) [see also Nos. 9, 10–12, 13, and 14] |
| 1975–1980+ | Burnley Building Society |
| By 1995–present | Whittards Teas & Coffees |