1 & 3 St Andrew’s Road
Joint list entry for 1 and 3 St Andrew's Road: 1369425
No. 1 (right) and No. 3 (left) St Andrew’s Road (which until 1955 was called Church Street) were built in the early nineteenth century and appear in the 1841 census. They are two of the earliest brick houses in Old Headington, and have Welsh slate roofs.
Jeffcoat Row with nine cottages was cut through behind them. (See below for more on the Jeffcoat family)
No. 1 St Andrew Road (also known as Stone House)
Postcard of 1 St Andrew's Road (postmarked 24 December 1904)
At the top right is a bough of the ancient tree that used to stand outside the former Black Boy
At the time of the 1841 census, William Jeffcoat himself was still living in this house, described as a baker. He was now a widower of 71, and eight of his sixteen children were still living with him: Susanna (43); Martha (41); Joseph (25), a linen draper; Rebecca (20); Mary (15); Edwin (19), a baker; Jonathan (18), an attorney’s clerk; and Mark (15).
In his Will dated 10 March 1845, William Jeffcoat described himself as a baker and shopkeeper of Headington and described these two houses and the land behind thus:
part of my freehold property at Headington namely the part called the old bakehouse or scite thereof with ground behind the same including the orchard down to the cross wall which separates this property from the front of my cottages at the north part or end and all the walls and buildings standing or being on the same ground as the same is now enclosed and divided from my other property all which ground and premises so enclosed and divided (including the scite of the old Bakehouse) contains the fol lowing dimensions within the boundary walls thereof namely In length from North to South two hundred and ninety five feet or there abouts and in breadth from East to West at the top or south part forty feet or thereabouts in the middle sixty feet or thereabouts and at the bottom or North part forty three feet or thereabouts
William Jeffcoat died in 1845. The Headington Ratebook of 1850 describes 1 St Andrew's Road as a house and garden owned and occupied by his son Charles Jeffcoat, with a gross estimated rental of £30-0-0 and a rateable value of £24-0-0. The nine cottages running along Jeffcoat Row behind this house (occupied by Godfrey, Soanes, Ewing, Medcalf, Stanton, Taylor, Green, Rice, and Snow) evidently varied in size, as their gross estimated rentals varied from £5 to £8 and their rateable values from £3 10s to £5 10s.
The 1851 census duly shows Charles (38), described as a baker, living at 1 St Andrew's Road with his siblings Susanna (50) and Mary Ann Jeffcoat (30), who were both described as annuitants, and Jonathan Jeffcoat (28), a banker’s clerk. Living with them was their nephew George Jeffcoat.
In 1861 Charles Jeffcoat was still the baker here, but a different sister, Mrs Martha Nobes, then a widow of 50 and described as a proprietor of houses, was now living with him.
The Jeffcoat baking enterprise ceased approximately at the time that William Berry senior started up his baking business at Mather’s Farm in 1863.
In 1871 the house appears to have been unoccupied, and in the 1881 census it looks as though Henry Dormor, a retired grocer, was living here. He died at the age of 77 near the end of 1883.
On 6 November 1886 Jackson's Oxford Journal advertised the forthcoming auction of this house:
All that FREEHOLD DWELLING HOUSE, with Greenhouse and large well-stocked Garden, situated and being No. 1, Church-street, Headington. The House has a double frontage, and contains entrance hall and four rooms on the ground floor; four bed rooms and a good-sized box-room, There is a side road for vehicles. The property covers an area of about 1154 square yards. The premises are now vacant, but have been till recently let at an annual rental of £21. This Lot forms an excellent and desirable Cottage Residence, within an easy distance of Oxford.
On 7 February 1891 Jackson's Oxford Journal advertised another forthcoming auction of the freehold of this house, and the following adjoining freehold property was also included in the sale:
- Lots 1 & 2 are 1 & 3 St Andrew's Road
- Lot 3 is 5 St Andrew's Road
- Lot 4 is an orchard/kitchen garden/ tennis court behind, with a frontage to Larkins Lane and St Andrew's Lane
- Lot 5 is a walled garden on the corner of Larkins Lane (now 7 & 9 St Andrew's Road
- Lot 6, 7, & 8 are two cottages on the north side of Lot 4, and four more cottages adjoining to the west
No. 1 was rented by Captain Frederick Gray at the time of this auction, and he and his family are duly listed here in the Old Headington censuses of 1891 and 1901.
At the time of the 1911 census two bakers, Charles and William Harris, who were brothers, lived here at 1 St Andrew's Road with another set of three unmarried siblings.
Early in the First World War the house was bought by the baker William John Berry (born 1874) after his lease ran out on Mather’s Farm, and he continued to run a baker's shop at the front of the house with a bakery at the back facing Larkin's Lane. The 1921 census shows Berry (47) living at 1 Church Street (= 1 St Andrew's Road) with his wife Edith and their four youngest children.
The 1939 Register shows William Berry (now described as a retired baker), still living here with his wife Edith, their sons William and Kenneth who are described as master bakers, their daughter Ruth, and a servant.
Until the 1980s the business was run by Janice Berry and her husband Ernst Laessing. In June 1988 they were granted planning permission for the demolition of the bakehouse (88/00446/LH) and for a five-bedroom dwelling with double garage to be built on its site (88/00445/NFH). The twentieth-century shop window of No.1 on the right was replaced with one to match the other ground-floor window, and it is now a private house.
No. 3 St Andrew’s Road ( “The Hostel” or “Boxtree”)
Daniel and Charles Jeffcoat, two of the unmarried sons of William Jeffcoat lived here at the time of the 1841 census. In 1851 Charles had moved next door to take his father’s place, and No. 3 appears to have been let out.
In 1861, another of William’s unmarried sons, Jonathan Jeffcoat (37), who was a banker’s clerk, was living here with two of his sisters: Susanna (62), who was unmarried and described as an annuitant, and Mrs Mary Berry, who had been widowed very soon after her marriage in 1855. By 1871 Susannah had died, but Jonathan and Mary still lived here. By 1881, Jonathan lived here alone, looked after by three servants: he was still a bank clerk at the age of 58, and (according to Within Living Memory) a professional photographer. He died on 25 January 1887.
On 7 February 1891 Jackson's Oxford Journal advertised a forthcoming auction of this house: see advertisement above. It was then rented by Mrs Adams, who was described as a lodging house keeper in the 1891 census, when she had two boarders (a clerk in holy orders and a student).
The 1901 census lists the house as “The Hostel”, occupied by Richard Chillman, a gardener, and his wife Elizabeth: they had three boarders (a student, an architect, and a single woman). In 1911 Richard Chillman (now a pensioner of 65) was there with just his wife Elizabeth (66) and one servant.
Mrs Helen Alexandra Ashworth is listed in Kelly’s Directory for 1915/16 and 1916/17 as living at “The Hostel”, While she was living here, her son John Percival Curtis Ashworth was killed in the First World War.
The 1921 census shows Miss Maud Margaret Olivier (58), who was the sister of Lady Nicholson of Church House and the aunt of the actor Laurence Olivier, living at 3 St Andrew's Road with her servant.
In 1928 Miss Olivier sold the house (now renamed Boxtrees) to Salvador de Madariaga, who had been appointed Professor of Spanish Studies and Fellow of Exeter College that year. He only lived in the house for a couple of years at this point, as in 1931 he was appointed Spanish ambassador to the United States, and in 1932 to France.
From 1933 de Madariaga leased it to Captain Vadim Narishkin, with whom the well-known Russian-born photographer Cyril Arapoff stayed when he first came to Oxford. Arapoff's photographs of this house can be seen at the Oxfordshire History Centre.
Narishkin, who from 1938 is described as Lecturer in French at Brasenose College, remained here until the 1940s, when Don Salvador de Madariaga (who had gone into exile in England to escape the Spanish civil war) returned to live once again in the house he owned. He remained there until the 1970s, and his daughters sold the house in 1984.
The JEFFCOAT family of St Andrew's RoadIn the first half of the nineteenth century the houses and land between Larkins Lane and St Andrew’s Lane belonged to members of the Jeffcoat family.William Jeffcoat (1771–1845)William Jeffcoat was originally a carpenter and builder. He was living in St Giles' parish in Oxford when on 17 September 1795 he married his first wife, Mary Joyce Bradley of the parish of St Peter-in-the-East Oxford at St Giles's Church. They settled in his wife's parish, probably in Longwall Street where they definitely lived by 1808, and had five children:
His first wife Mary Joyce Jeffcoat died in 1803 and was buried at St Peter-in-the-East Church on 3 August. William Jeffcoat then had twelve children with a woman called Rebecca, but as he describes them in his will of 1845 as his reputed children, it appears that she was a common-law wife. William was described as a builder in the parish registers up to 1815, and a publican in Headington thereafter. The entries show that the family moved up from Oxford to Headington at some point between 1813 and 1815:
Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 18 January 1823 announced that the sale of Headington Windmill would take place “at Mr Jeffcoat’s. the Sign of the Black Boy, in Headington”. William Jeffcoat was very prosperous for a builder turned publican, and he owned seven properties in St Peter in the East parish which he continued to rent out after his move up to Headington. In 1830 Pigot's Directory of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire lists William Jeffcoat as a baker and as a shopkeeper & dealer in groceries & sundries in Headington. By 1841 William Jeffcoat had built Nos. 1 and 3 St Andrew’s Road, as well as a row of nine cottages running from Larkins Lane (about where Jeffcoat House is now) to St Andrew’s Lane: they were known as Jeffcoat’s Row or Jeffcoat's Buildings (demolished in the 1930s). He himself occupied 1 St Andrew’s Road, where he ran a bakery, and some of his children lived at No. 3. William’s common-law wife Rebecca died after a short illness on 18 March 1839 at the age of 57 and was buried at St Andrew’s Church the next day. The 1841 census shows William Jeffcoat, described as a baker, living in Church Street (1 St Andrew's Road) with his daughter Susanna and seven of the children he had by Rebecca, namely Martha, Joseph (who was a linen draper), Rebecca, Mary, Edwin (who was a baker), Jonathan (who was an attorney's clerk) and Mark. Next door at 3 St Andrew's Road were his son Daniel (who was a carpenter) and his natural son Charles (who was a baker). On 10 March 1845 William Jeffcoat signed his Will (of which a transcript can be seen here). He died after a long illness at the age of 74 on 22 May 1845 and was buried in St Andrew's churchyard in Headington on 29 May. He was described as a shopkeeper in his Will, but ten years after his death when his daughter Mary Ann got married she described him as a carpenter. Charles Jeffcoat (1813–1861)William's son continued to run the bakery and the pub. In 1847 he was reprimanded at the Court of the Manor of Heddington for lopping the famous elm tree that used to stand outside the Black Boy next to the village stocks, and he was still listed as the owner of the pub in the Headington Rent Book of 1850, although he was not then the landlord. The 1850 Headington Rate Book shows that Charles Jeffcoat owned ten houses in the village of Old Headington as well as the Black Boy Jonathan Jeffcoat (1823–1887)The 1850 rate book for Headington shows that Jonathan owned a house and garden in Old Headington village extending over more than nineteen acres which he let out to Joseph Appleton, and a house and garden in Old High Street that he let out to James Gardner The family graveThe family has a grave near the cross in St Andrew’s churchyard. It reads: Sacred / to the / memory of / George / son of / William Jeffcoat / who died April 1833 / also Rebecca Ann / … . who died in her infancy / -e-m- Jeffcoat / (four more lines unreadable). |
