Joint list entry for 1 and 2 North Place: 1047203

Photograph of 1 & 2 North Place in c.1988

No. 1 North Place is the large house on the right of this photograph (two windows wide with a central front door). The two houses next to it are very narrow (each just one window wide). They are numbered (right to left) 2A and 2 North Place. No. 2A is now knocked through and is part of No. 1.

All three houses are on different levels. No. 1 was built first, probably around 1690, as it has a blocked-up window in the loft on the east side. They were described thus by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, published in 1939:

(270) Cottage on the S. side of North Place, 300 yards S.S.E. of the church, is of two storeys with attics; the walls are of rubble and the roofs are slate-covered. It was built probably in the 17th century and has some battened doors of that date.

(271) Cottages, immediately E. of (270), are of similar character and were built probably early in the 18th century.

The name “North Place” is relatively new and until 1930 the houses here were listed as part of “High Street, Old Headington” (Old High Street), which makes them difficult to find before that date. .

These were copyhold cottages held under the Manor of Heddington (whose Manor House was Headington House, and should not be confused with the Manor of Headington).

The bakery at North Place and the Pates family, from before 1819 to 1930

Joseph Pates was born in Islip in 1782 and later moved to Headington. He came of age at the end of 1803 and some time after that date set up a bakery at 1 & 2 North Place, where his bread oven still survives in one of the exterior walls of No. 1, with a large working fireplace next to it. He married Sarah Coombs at St Andrew's Church in 1819 and they had three children who survived: William Pates (b.1820), Ann Pates (b.1822), and Sarah Ward Pates (b.1824).

Joseph Pates died here at the age of 50 on 20 September 1833, and in his will dated 1 September 1832 he left his house and baking business here to his widow Sarah Pates provided that she did not remarry

• Transcript of the whole will of William Pates

Mrs Sarah Pates née Coombs continued to manage the business in North Place until August 1836, when she decided to retire. Her son William was only sixteen and serving his apprenticeship, and so she put the following advertisement in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 20 August 1836:

TO BAKERS, BUTCHERS, &c.
TO be LET,—An excellent BAKING BUSINESS, now in full trade, in the populous village of Headington, one mile and a half from Oxford, with a good and substantial well-built DWELLING HOUSE, Bake-house, Slaughter-house, several other out-houses, yard, garden pigeries, &c. now in the occupation of Mrs. Pates, who is retiring from business.

Mrs Sarah Pates moved into 16 St Andrew's Road (another property that she inherited from her husband Joseph), and she can be seen there in the 1841 census with her daughters Annie and Emma Pates, while her other daughter Sarah was in 1841 the servant of the baker Thomas Coombs (probably her maternal uncle) and his wife Martha in Wellington Road, Surrey, and never came back to Headington. The only son of Joseph & Sarah, William Pates, was the apprentice baker of the baker Richard Roberts of Radley at the time of that census, but he came of age soon afterwards in about August 1841 and presumably took over his father's baking business in North Place, as the Headington Vestry minutes in 1845 include “William Pates of Headington (baker)” in the list of people qualified and liable to serve as constables, and he is listed as a Headington baker in the Post Office Directory of 1847.

Joseph Pates's widow Sarah died at the age of 53 in June 1848, and under this term of Joseph Pates's will William Pates inherited 1 & 2 North Place:

after the deth of my Wife for my Son William Pates to have this house as I now Hockepy and Bake House and Cotedge in the yard and all the buildings there on and Garding and not let after her deth or with her Consent and for he to alow her a house to live in and maintaine ___t of it that was be left to her and after her deth for William to have the baking business and all the book debts and the and stock of flour wheat ?cols and pigs as may be in persehioon at that time....

William left the premises unoccupied as he appears to have set up business in Oxford. At a Special Court Baron of Heddington Manor on Wednesday 31 January 1849 the two executors of Joseph Pates's Will (James Coombs, who was his wife's brother, and Thomas Burrows junior of Southfield Farm) prayed to be admitted tenants to the following (1 & 2 North Place):

1 messuage 1 yard 1 garden with appurtenances lying within this Manor and formerly in the occupation of Sarah Pates and now untenanted

Rendering therefor Rent yearly 6d and 6d for a Heriot and James Coombs and Thomas Burrows paid to the Lord 10/- for a fine and were admitted Tenants but their fealty was respited.

The 1850 rate book of Headington shows William Pates as the owner of a “house and garden” in the High Street (North Place) with a gross estimated rental of £24. and a rateable value of £20, but he continued to let it out, as the occupier is listed in the rent book as Edwin Francis Moody. The 1851 census duly lists the baker & grocer Moody (53) living with his wife Jane and their five children, plus a servant in the High Street (obviously at this house, as his entry is immediately before Old Headington Infant School in North Place).

Following the death of William Pates in 1858 at the age of 37, the property in North Place seems to have passed to his sister Sarah Ward Pates (b.1824), who had married the carpenter William David Crosweller in London on 20 April 1850.She remained in London and presumably let it out. It is possible that this was no longer a bakery by the time of the 1871 census, as there were three other master bakers in Old Headington by then: Thomas Coppock and William Berry both had bakeries in St Andrew’s Road, and Henry Harris had one in Church Lane (the name of both St Andrew's or Larkins Lane). Sarah Ward Crosweller (née Pates) died in 1875 and her husband William David Crosweller died in 1890, and it is possible that their only child William Thomas Crosweller (born 14 March 1851) inherited the North Place property. On 18 February 1882 In Lambeth he married his cousin Annie Pates, but they had no children

William Pates's widow Ann and her second husband John Elkerton were living in Old High Street at the time of the 1881 and 1891 censuses, but it is impossible to tell if they were at the house in North Place. Ann died in 1908.

By 1930 Nos. 1, 2, & 2A North Place were owned by William Alexander Pates and Francis Shee, who are both hard to identify.

See end of this page for a detailed genealogy of the Pates family

Occupants/owners of 1, 2, & 2A North Place from 1930 to 1976

The quantity surveyor William Trevor Jones (born at Muswell Hill, London in 1901) was the son of Sydney Herbert Jones and Jessie Elizabeth Boby, who were married in the Edmonton district in 1900. His parent leased Laurel Farm in Old Headington from Corpus Christi College from about 1916, but his father died there soon afterwards on 22 March 1917 and his mother continued to run a nursery garden there on her own. On 5 March 1921 at Ss Philip & James Church in north Oxford Wiliam's mother married her second husband Aubrey Charles Tagg, becoming Jessie Elizabeth Tagg. By the time of the 1921 census William (20) was a motor engineer for Hartwell's Garages in Queen Street and was living at 20 St Andrew's Road with his mother and stepfather. In 1929 in the Thame registration district William Trevor Jones married Phyllis Mabel Cook of Long Crendon. and in March 1930 he bought 1, 2, & 2A North Place from William Alexander Pates & George Francis Shee, and he and his wife lived at No. 1 until 1935. They then moved to 40 Mill Street, Kidlington, but later returned to Headington and lived at his mother's old house at 20 St Andrew's Road.

It appears that his mother Jessie Elizabeth Tagg now owned 1, 2, & 2A North Place, as she sold them on 25 September 1950 to Mrs Dorothy May Bicknell (who lived in No. 1: see below).

William Trevor Jones died in July 1954, and his mother Mrs Jessie Elizabeth Tagg died at 20 St Andrew's Road at the age of 93 on 21 January 1969 (leaving £31,592).

1 North Place

The 1921 census shows Frank William Robertson (71), a retired pensioner from the India Ordnance Department in India, living at 1 North Place with his wife Sydney (54), who was working as an orderly at the Wingfield Convalescent Hospital, and their son Edward (18), who was an out-of-work clerk who had been working in the Bursar's Office at New College, plus their nephew Francis Hunt (19), who was a gardener.

This house was occupied by Mrs Shepherd in 1930.

In 1933 the greengrocer Richard W. Beazley was listed here as well as the owner of the property, William Trevor Jones, with the latter on his own in 1935.

Tom Hayward was listed here in Kelly's Directory for 1936. The 1939 Register shows Hayward (born 1876), described as a retired engine driver, living here with his wife Ethel, and a second couple, Percy R. Boyles (born 1894), a builder's labourer, and his wife Annie (née Hayten). Directories from 1938 to 1947 list just Boyles, who was considered the main householder.

Robert Sidney Pearce Boby (probably a relation of William Trevor Jones's mother) is listed here in 1949.

Mrs Dorothy May Bicknell bought Nos. 1, 2, & 2A from Jessie Elizabeth Tagg on 25 September 1950 and is listed in directories as living here at No. 1 from 1952 to 1970,

Mrs Bicknell sold No. 1 to John & Josephine Leach and John B. Leach is listed here in Kelly's Directory from 1972 up to the last edition in 1976.

Photograph of 1 North Place in c.1988

2 North Place

The 1921 census shows John Shepherd (44), a farm labourer for J. W. White at Wood Farm, living her with his wife Ann (39) and their 12-year-old son Albert.

This was occupied by Mrs Morgan from 1930 to 1936 and by John Morgan from 1938 to 1964. The 1939 Register shows John Morgan (born 1885), a jobbing mechanic, living here with Maggie Morgan (born 1886), a teacher.

Dorothy Bicknell sold No. 2A to Ellen Elizabeth Green on 9 December 1971, and she is listed here in Kelly's Directory up to the last edition in 1976.

2A (sometimes numbered 1A) North Place

The 1921 census shows the widow Annie Louch (70) living here, and she was still here on her own at the time of the 1939 Register. She died here at the age of 92 in December 942.

Malcolm Andrew Fyfe is listed here in 1945, and someone surnamed Nicholson in 1947.

There is no separate listing for No. 2A in the 1949–1956 directories.

Miss C. Renfrew was here from 1958 to 1964 (with Pamela Lumley in 1966 only), and then C. E. Renfrew (possibly the same person) is listed from 1967. On 21 October 1971 Dorothy Bicknell sold this house to the occupant renting it, Catherine Easton Renfrew, and Ms Renfrew continued to be listed as living here up to the last Kelly's Directory in 1976.