Nos. 60–61: St Cross College
St Cross College occupies the former Pusey House at 60 and 61 St Giles' Street. The present building, which dates from 1918, is Grade II listed (ref. 1485/521)
The original pair of eighteenth-century semi-detached houses that stood on this site had large gardens and a wide street frontage. They can be seen in 1907 in the centre of this picture on the English Heritage website.
In 1884 the “Pusey Memorial House” was founded at the house numbered 61 in memory of Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800–1882), one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. The main purpose of this memorial house was to make Dr Pusey's large theological library the centre of a “house of sacred learning”.
At that time No. 60 next door to the north was a boarding school for young ladies, which had been founded in about 1850. That school closed In 1891 and Pusey House then expanded to include No. 60. It then obtained three smaller houses to the north (Nos. 57–59) and demolished them to make way for their chapel and the first part of the library.
In 1918 Pusey House largely demolished its original old premises at Nos. 60 and 61 to make way for the second phase of their library, including the frontage to St Giles shown above. (Two eighteenth-century rooms survive internally: the Pamphlet Room and the Van Heyningen Room.) The buildings were designed in the late Gothic Style by Temple Moore, to the modified designs of his father-in-law Temple Moore.
The postcard below shows Pusey House in about 1925.
In 1981 St Cross College (founded in 1965 and then based in temporary accommodation to the south of St Cross Church in Manor Road) took up a 999-year lease for the southern part of the Pusey House site, and it became a full college of the university in c.1990. Pusey House Chapel and Library to the north continues in its original tradition.
| Occupants listed in censuses and
directories (grey background = earlier building) |
||
| Year | 60 St Giles | 61 St Giles |
| 1841–6 | George Davenport | Mrs Mary Foucart |
| 1851–2 | Ladies Boarding School/Seminary Misses Howe & Miss Beaufoy |
|
| 1861–7 | Dr Gilbert W. Child | |
| 1869–76 | Joseph Standen Tailor |
|
| 1880–4 | Misses Hyde | |
| 1884–90 | Pusey Memorial House | |
| 1893–1918 | Pusey (Memorial) House and Library | |
| 1918–1981 | Pusey House | |
| 1981–present | South part: Pusey House Chapel and Library North part: St Cross College |
|
No. 60: In 1841 this was occupied by the 65-year-old banker George Davenport and his four children aged 15 to 25. By 1851 it had become a boarding school for young ladies, run by Miss Anne Howe (aged 30), her sister Louisa (aged 26), and Miss Emma Beaufoy (aged 24). Also in residence on census night was a teacher of French, two servants, and 16 girl boarders aged from 7 to 13. By 1881 Miss Louisa Howe had gone, and the school had expanded to 29 pupils, aged from 10 to 17.
No. 61: In 1841 this was occupied by the widowed fundholder Mrs Mary Foucart, and she was still here at the time of the 1851 census, aged 86, cared for by a butler and a house servant.