84: The Grand Café
No. 84 is a Grade II listed building (List Entry No. 1047292) dating from the late eighteenth century. It was in St Peter-in-the East parish until that parish was united with St Cross parish in 1957.
The sites of 83 and 84 High Street have been owned by University College since the early fourteenth century.
The first coffee house in England is believed to have stood on the site of No. 84.
The1772 Survey of Oxford shows two people living at No. 84, sharing one entrance: Mr Sadler with a frontage of 3 yards 1 ft 9 in., and Mr Dickinson with a frontage of 4 yards 1 ft 4 in.
From 1813 this building was leased from University College by the landlord of the Angel Inn, and in the following ten years or so the ground floor was altered into part of the inn's coffee-room, and the upstairs was remodelled as bedrooms and sitting-rooms of the inn.
Nos. 84 is on the right of the engraving of the Angel Hotel in 1820 shown below. Neither this building nor 83 to the left then had a front entrance, as they were approached internally from the inn rather than from the street.
See under the Angel Inn & Hotel for the staff who lived in this part of the inn.
The popularity of the Angel Inn declined after the coming of the railway to Oxford, and in 1855 Samuel Young Griffith put it up for sale. No buyer came forth for the main building, but the grocer Francis Thomas Cooper (who until then had a grocer’s shop across the road at 46 High Street) paid £2,350 for the residue of a forty-year lease on the Angel Coffee Room at Nos. 83 and 84. He let out No. 83, and used No. 84 as his shop with living accommodation upstairs. In the 1861 census he was listed here as a widower of 49 with four children and described as a tea dealer, while his visiting brother, Henry, was described as a tea merchant. Also living over the shop were Francis’s widowed sister Anne Hill (who was his shop assistant), and his niece Harriett Stone (who was his housekeeper), and six servants.
Francis Thomas Cooper died in 1862. His son Frank Cooper (born 1844) was then only 17, but he reached the age of 21 in 1865, the same year that the Angel Hotel closed down. In 1867 he expanded the family grocery business into the shop next door at No. 83, and from 1867 until the 1950s Nos. 83 and 84 formed a single shop. The 1871 census shows Frank (24) and his brother Arthur (21) living over both shops: they were bachelors described as grocers and wine merchants, and the firm was now F. & A. Cooper.
In 1872 Frank Cooper married Sarah Jane Gill, and In 1874 Mrs Sarah Cooper, then aged 24, made 76 lb of marmalade to her secret recipe. She sold what the family could not eat, and Oxford Marmalade was born.
Left: This advertisement in Harrod’s Directory of 1876 advertises the brothers Frank & Arthur Cooper at 83 & 84 High Street, but there is no mention of Oxford Marmalade yet
There was no one living over the premises at the time of the 1881 census.
At the time of the 1891 and 1901 censuses Frank & Sarah Cooper were living over No. 84 as well as No. 83 next door.
Mrs Cooper’s marmalade grew so popular that in 1900 the marmalade factory of Frank Cooper Ltd opened in the Victoria Buildings in Park End Street. The business moved to the former ice rink on the Botley Road in 1947 (on the site of the present Waitrose), and away from Oxford in 1967. Frank Cooper’s shop, however, remained here at No. 84 until 1919.
The photograph below (Historic England HT00111) shows Frank Cooper's shop at Nos. 83 & 84 at a date after 1882:
Right: Detail of a painting by William Matthison of c.1905, showing Nos. 83 and 84 when they were Cooper’s marmalade shop
At the time of the 1911 census Harry Jones (51), who was unmarried, ran a boarding house in the 23 rooms over 83 & 84 High Street with the help of two servants.
Nos. 83 & 84 were taken over by Twining Brothers, Grocers in 1919, and then was a Co-op and a Post Office.
In 1987, when the post office here was closed down, Frank Cooper Ltd took the shop over again and sold marmalade here as well as housing a small museum, but it only survived for a few years. The English Teddy Bear Company had an equally short life, and then the Grand Café opened in the mid-1990s.
In the early 1970s, a transfer of property between The Queen’s College and University College brought No. 85 under the same ownership as its neighbours to the east and the upper floors of Nos. 83–85 were made into a single unit, which has been occupied by students of University College since that date.
Photograph of No. 49 in 1949, when it was part of a café
Occupiers of 84 High Street | |
1839, 1846, 1852 |
Angel Hotel (Samuel Young Griffith) |
1856–1867 |
Francis Cooper and his son Frank Cooper (jointly with No. 83 from 1869) 1856–1867: F. T. Cooper, Italian warehouse & winemerchant [Executors
of F. T. Cooper in 1867] |
1919–1939 |
Twining Brothers, Grocers (jointly with No. 83) |
1941–1943 |
T. Pritchard, Ironmonger |
1945–1954 |
Oxford & District Co-operative Society Ltd,
Café |
1956–1962 |
Not listed: probably part of the Co-op grocery at 85 next door |
1964–1984 |
High Street Sub-Post Office |
1984–c.1990 |
Frank Cooper Ltd Museum |
c.1992–1997 |
English Teddy Bear Company |
1997–present |
The Grand Café |
