124: All Bar One
No. 124 is the left-hand half of a seventeenth-century house, but with its neighbour at 125 was largely rebuilt in the nineteenth century. They are jointly Grade II (ref. 1485/341).
n 1772 a survey of every house in the city was taken in consequence of the Mileways Act of 1771. A single house then stood on the site of Nos. 123 and 124: it was in the occupation of a Mr Brockis, and its double frontage measured 14 yards 2 feet 4 inches.
By 1839 Charles Foster was a draper at this shop. On the morning of Sunday 13 March 1842 a serious fire started at 123 High Street next door (reported in Jackson's Oxford Journal of 19 March 1842), "completely destroying … Mr. C. Foster's house and elegant shop (fitted up recently at an immense expense)".
Charles Foster returned to the rebuilt premises after the fire, and by the time of the 1851 census he was living over his pair of shops at 123 and 124 High Street with his wife and seven young children, a tailor’s clerk, three general servants, a governess, and an errand boy. He was still there in 1861.
For over a 150 years, from the 1830s to 1999, this shop was occupied by just two firms: Foster & Co. for 50 years or more, and Sydney Acott (latterly Russell & Acott) for 105 years. (Together with 123 and 125, this building is not properly marked on the 1876 map of Oxford and was unoccupied at the time of the 1881 census, suggesting that major rebuilding work was then taking place.)
Graham Ansell, the owner of Russell Acott, sold the shop in 1998 to All Bar One.
| Occupiers of 124 High Street since 1839 | |
| 1839 | Foster,
jnr & Co Linen drapers & mercers and Pfeil, Hunt, & Co Wine & spirit merchants and T.W. Ward Solicitor |
| 1846–1893 | Foster
& Co. Drapers & mercers (merged with Parsons at No. 123 by 1852) |
| 1894–1999 | Sydney
Acott & Co. Musical instrument dealers & warehouse later Russell Acott Ltd Musical dealers |
| 1999–present | All Bar One |