34: Reginald Davis
No. 34 has an eighteenth-century front, possibly on a seventeenth-century house. It is a Grade II listed building (ref. 1485/932).
This was a private house until 1871. At the time of the 1851 census it was occupied by Anne Prichard, an annuitant, with her two daughters and a granddaughter, and two servants.
In 1696 Sir Robert Harrison, twice Mayor of Oxford, paid tax on twenty windows at this house.
George Valentine Cox (1786–1875), the author of Recollections of Oxford (1868) lived here in the 1860s: he had previously lived in Cowley House, now part of St Hilda’s College. He is described in the 1861 census as an Esquire Bedel: a widower of 75, he was living here with his three spinster daughters and two servants.
In 1772 a survey of every house in the city was taken in consequence of the Mileways Act of 1771. According to Salter, No. 34 was then in the occupation of a Mr Wickham, and its frontage measured 8 yards 0 feet 0 inches.
Until 1867, this was a private house, but it was then altered into a shop. Jackson’s Oxford Journal for 19 October 1867 reports:
The house formerly occupied by Mr Valentine Cox, in the High-street, has been altered on the ground floor, so as to afford a shop widow for Mr Muir, the present occupant. It is not an example of any particular school of art, yet the effect is decidedly pleasing.
At the time of the 1881 census, this shop had tenants upstairs: a college servant, with his wife and two children. The well-known Oxford photographer Henry Taunt moved to this shop in about 1895 from No. 41 High Street, and he remained here until 1906, when he removed all his work to his home on the Cowley Road.
| Occupiers of 34 High Street | |
| 1846 | John Matthews Solicitor |
| 1852 | Revd C. E. Prichard |
| 1861–1867 | G. V. Cox, Esq Esquire bedel |
| 1871–1880 | J. A. Muir Tailor & robe maker; agent for Muir’s archery |
| 1882–1892 | H. J. Wheeler Boot & shoe maker |
| 1893 | Alan John Adamson Tailor |
| 1894–1896 | Sidney Biggs & Co Booksellers & stationers |
| 1896–1906 | Henry W. Taunt & Co. Photographers |
| 1907–1908 | Louis Valette Church repository |
| 1909–1931 | Victor R. E. Drewe Hairdresser |
| 1932–1939 | Oliver Smith, Antique furniture dealer (1932) The Antiquary (1935–1939) |
| 1941–present | Reginald Davis Jewellers |