Joseph Lock, Mayor of Oxford

Joseph Lock

Mayor of Oxford 1813/14 and 1829/30

Joseph Lock (1760–1844) was the only son of Edward Lock (a goldsmith and banker in Oxford’s High Street who was Mayor in 1776, 1791, and 1806). He was baptised at All Saints Church on 17 April 1760.

Parson Woodforde mentions giving money to Joseph when he was a child at his father’s shop. On 13 April 1774 Joseph, then aged 14, was apprenticed to his father for seven years, and followed him into the goldsmith and banking business.

In 1781 Lock married Elizabeth Watson, daughter of the grocer Benjamin Watson who lived in the parish of St Peter-in-the-East. The next year Lock was admitted free, and continued to work with his father. He was selected as Mayor’s Child by the new Mayor, Richard Weston, in 1786, and took up his Chamberlain’s place immediately. In 1793 he was elected Bailiff.

Lock and his wife lived over his father’s shop at 137 High Street in All Saints parish, but they lost at least five children in infancy there, and it may be this that caused them to build a country house where the children could enjoy fresher air. They built their first country house at Iffley between 1794 and 1800 (below). Now named Denton House, it stands on the high ground above Iffley Turn. Their three remaining children who moved there (Edward, born in 1785, Elizabeth, born in 1793, and Maria, born in 1797) all survived to adulthood. In April 1799 Joseph took on his own son, Edward, as an apprentice.

Denton House

Under the Headington Enclosure Award of 1804, Joseph was awarded about 17 acres of land in central Headington, including the site of the present Bury Knowle Park, and he immediately built Bury Knowle House (below) as his new country home.

Joseph Lock and his wife were both loathed by the people of Headington from the moment they arrived. In 1805, because he erected a wall across the footpath that was the coffin route from Headington Quarry (which then had no church) to St Andrew’s Church. (This is the footpath that runs behind the present Somerfield car-park.) Three times the doughty Quarry men smashed down the wall, and three times Lock rebuilt it, taking three of the men involved to court.

The then vicar of St Andrew’s Church, Thomas Whorwood, was financially dependent on his older brother, Henry Mayne Whorwood, Lord of the Manor of Headington and lay rector; and the latter, though despising Lock, had to tread carefully because he owed him money. But James Palmer, the curate of St Andrew’s, did not see why the people of Quarry should have to carry their coffins even further to get to their church. In 1805 he wrote to the Bishop of Oxford, not mincing his words on the subject of Mrs Ballachey’s parents:

Mr Lock, whose improper conduct has made no inconsiderable disturbance in this parish, is a person in whose estimation the possession of money is a compensation for the absence of almost everything else…. Mr Lock would not be so much disliked as he is, if he did not permit his wife, who is a busy meddling woman, to interfere as much as she does in everything in which he is concerned. He suffers her to make a fool of him, therefore he is a fool.

In the end, St Andrew’s Church lost out; the people of Quarry turned their backs on Old Headington and arranged to have a Methodist preacher come to them; they never came back to St Andrew’s, and their own church was built for them in 1849.

In 1813 Joseph’s father Edward died, and he took over his shop and the University Bank. In the same year he was elected Mayor, and in 1814 he was knighted by the Prince Regent when he visited Oxford with the Allied Sovereigns during his mayoral year.

The following advertisement appeared in Jackson's Oxford Journal for 13 May 1820, and marks the point at which Sir Joseph Lock ceased the retail side of his business to concentrate on banking. It gives a good idea of some of the items that Lock would have sold in his High Street shop.

Sale of stock

Lock was on the Committee of Management of the Radcliffe Infirmary, reporting bad smells in the Litchfield and Frewin Wards in 1825. He was also President & Treasuer of the Oxford Medical Dispensary and Lying-in charity.

Lady Lock died in 1822 at the age of 62, leaving Sir Joseph a widower for 22 years. Perhaps he mellowed in his old age, for in 1827 he gave some land in Nacklingcroft Meadow off Marston Road to be the site of the present St Clement’s Church.

In December 1821 Lock was chosen as President of the new Oxford Mechanics' Institute, and in March 1830 Treasurer of the new Oxford, Oxfordshire, and Neighbouring Counties Horticultural Society.

In 1829 Sir Joseph was elected an Alderman and entered his second term as Mayor. He did not get a seat on the new Corporation in 1835, but was selected to be a magistrate.

In 23 Augut 1831 Lock's elder surviving daughter, Elizabeth, was married to John Wilson, Esq., a Captain in the Royal Marines, at Headington, by the Revd Dr Symonds, Warden of Wadham College. (They had no children, and Elizabeth died at Southsea after a short illness on 27 July 1842, and was brought to Headington for burial.)

At the time of the 1841 census Sir Joseph was 80, and is described as a banker. Living with him in his High Street home were his daughter Maria, three independent guests or lodgers, a 25-year-old clerk called Benjamin Watson (likely to be a relation of his wife), and three servants.

On 13 May 1843 Lock's second daughter, Maria, was married in St Giles' Church (again by the Warden of Wadham) to George Baker Ballachey of Edgefield Mount in Norfolk.

Lock died on 16 January 1844 at the age of 83, and was buried at All Saints Church in Oxford with his wife: a tablet was erected there. His obituary emphasizes his good points:

The late Sir Joseph Lock … was Treasurer and a liberal supporter of most of the charities in this city, in which he took an active and especial interest, more particularly in the Oxford Medical Dispensary, over which he he presided for many years. Of the literary and scientific societies he was also a liberal patron, and acted as President of the Mechanics' Institution from the time of its formation to its decline, and as a member of the Oxford City Book Club from its commencement was always the foremost to promote its prosperity. In private life Sir J. Lock was distinguished for his amiable and social qualities, and the general knowledge he possessed was cheerfully dispensed for the benefit and entertainment of every circle he entered.

Of Lock's numerous children only Edward Lock and Mrs Maria Ballachey, survived him. Edward was bequeathed the Oxford property and Maria the land in Headington, including Bury Knowle House. She moved in immediately with her husband.

A sale of part of the contents of Lock's town house/bank was announced in Jackson's Oxford Journal of 4 and 11 May 1844:

Sale of contents of Lock's house