Francis Twining
Mayor of Oxford 1905/6
Francis Twining (1848–1929) was born in Thompson’s Building, St Aldate’s, Oxford. His father, Robert, was a stonemason, and his mother, Mary Anne, was born in Evesham, Worcestershire in 1811. He was baptised at St Aldate’s Church on 7 May 1848. He was distantly related to the Twining’s tea family.
Twining’s mother had first been married to a Mr Green, by whom she had a son, Edward Green, born in Leckhampton, Gloucestershire in 1832. She married Twining’s father in about 1835, and they started out their married life in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, where their daughter Maria was born in 1837. They then moved to Bromsgrove, where their son Henry was born two years later. Their son Robert was born in St Mary Magdalen parish in Oxford in 1844, and they had evidently moved to St Aldate’s by the time of Francis himself was born in 1848.
The 1851 census shows Twining at the age of two, living in St Aldate’s with his mother, his stepbrother Edward (18) and his full siblings Maria (13), Henry (11), and Robert (6).
When he left school, Twining first worked as a grocer’s boy for Grimbly Hughes in Cornmarket.
On 1 May 1870 Twining married Mrs Elizabeth Ann Smith (born in St Ebbe’s in 1844) at St Barnabas Church in Jericho. He was 21 and she was 26, and she already had a ten-year-old son, Ferdinand Smith.
At the time of the 1871 census, when he was 24, Twining is described as a grocer’s assistant, living at 6 Orchard Street, St Ebbe’s with his wife and his eldest son, Ernest (aged just 4 months). Soon afterwards he started to run his own grocer’s shop at 23 St Ebbe’s Street. Twining’s mother, Mary Ann, was now widowed and living with her daughter Mrs Maria Cox and family at 25 Cranham Street.
When his first son, Ernest William, was baptised at St Ebbe’s Church on 18 January 1871, Twining was a just a grocer’s assistant, living at Orchard Street; but when his next son Owen was baptised on 26 December 1872, he was a grocer living at St Ebbe’s Street. Their third child, Lottie, was born in 1874, then Gilbert was baptised on 8 October 1876, Harry on 10 December 1877 (died at the age of three weeks and buried on 21 December), Francis on 14 December 1879, and Albert Whitlock on 23 October 1880 (died at the age of three weeks and buried on 1 November).
At the time of the 1881 census, Twining, aged 33, was still living over the shop at 23 St Ebbe’s Street. With him were his wife Elizabeth (38), and his children Ernest (10), Owen (8), Lottie (6), Gilbert (4), and Francis junior (1), and his stepson Ferdinand Smith (21). Also living with him were his two elderly aunts, Harriet and Rose Lingham.
In 1884 Twining’s eighth and last child, Sidney, was born on 21 May 1884 and baptised at St Ebbe’s Church on 10 June. Twining’s address is given as 23 and 24 St Ebbe’s Street, indicating that the shop had got bigger.
As he began to prosper, Twining built as his home Summertown House (on the east side of the Banbury Road to the north of Apsley Road: this was then outside the parish boundary and deemed to be in Wolvercote). He can be found here, described as a wholesale grocer aged 43, at the time of the 1891 census; with him are his wife Elizabeth (48), and his children Ernest (20) and Owen (18), who are both described as grocer’s assistants, and Lottie (17), Gilbert (14), Francis (11) and Sidney (6), who are still at school. They have one domestic servant and a sick nurse, which suggests that Mrs Twining may have been ill.
In 1895 Twining bought the 25 acres of Hawkswell Farm, which he combined with the 25 acres of Stone’s Estate and in 1901 put plans before the council to lay out Portland, Lonsdale, King’s Cross, Victoria, Hamilton, and Lucerne Roads. At the time of the 1901 census he is described as married, but his wife is not at home. Living with him at Summertown House are Owen (28) who was a grocer’s assistant); Lottie (26); and Sidney (16) who was a clerk). The family had one servant.
By 1915 (in partnership with his brother Ernest) there were six Twinings Brothers branches throughout Oxford: the original shop at 23/24 St Ebbe’s Street, 53 Cornmarket Street; 16 North Parade Avenue, 46 High Street; 56 St Aldate’s street, and 294 Banbury Road.
In 1935 there were still six shops, but some in larger premises: 15-19 George Street; 164 Cowley Road; 15 North Parade Avenue; 83 & 84 High Street; 294 Banbury Road; and 3 Woodstock Road. All of these except the High Street branch were still open in 1955. By 1976, however, the only branches that survived were at 16 North Parade Avenue and 3 Woodstock Road.
Twining represented the Conservatives on the North Ward of the City Council serving first as Councillor and then as Alderman for a total of 50 years. He was chosen as Mayor in 1905.
Twining died in 1929, and his obituary notice in the Oxford Times stated that "he had for many years done good work with that quietness and lack of ostentation which marked his private and business life".
See also:
- Oxford Times, 6 September 1929, p. 10 (obituary)
- 1851 Census: Oxford (St Aldate), 1728/176
- 1861 Census:
- 1871 Census: Oxford (St Ebbe), 1439/24; mother: (St Paul), 1436/47
- 1881 Census: Oxford (St Ebbe), 1502/101
- 1891 Census: Oxford (Wolvercote), 1173/118
- 1901 Census: Oxford (Wolvercote), 1391/110
- Perilla Kinchin, Seven Roads in Summertown (White Cockade Publishing, 2006)