No. 1: Vacant
No. 1 St Giles’ Street is now the northernmost part of Balliol College. The house dates from c.1820 and is a Grade II listed building (List Entry No. 1369451). It lies in St Mary Magdalen parish.
The southern tenement of the Dolphin Inn stood on the site of No. 1 St Giles’ Street. When the inn was sold by the city to Trinity College in 1786, this tenement passed into private hands.
The house was purchased by James Morrell (1739–1807), an attorney of Oxford. His son Baker Morrell and his brother Robert Morrell (1740–1812) were then solicitors in Broad Street, but it was announced in Jackson's Oxford Journal of 12 March 1808 that their partnership would be dissolved on the 25th, and that Robert Morrell would remain in Broad Street but that Baker Morrell would transfer his business to his father's former house here. In about 1820 Baker Morrell demolished the old house on this site and erected the present 1 St Giles’ Street.
The 1841 census shows the attorney Baker Morrell (72) living here with his wife Mary and their five servants. Baker Morrell died aged 75 on 10 April 1854. His widow Mary Elizabeth Morrell remained in the house until her own death at the age of 80 on 15 March 1861. At the time of the 1861 census a few week's later, Mrs Morrell's companion Kate Bleeck (49) was living here with the five servants.
Baker Morrell's eldest son James Morrell junior (1802–1873) had been in partnership with him, and in 1866 Baker's younger son, Frederick Joseph Morrell (1811–1822) took over the business, in partnership with his own son Frederick Parker Morrell (1837–1908), who lived in Black Hall at the north end of St Giles' Street.
Morrell's continued to have an office here, but the house was also occupied as a residence, and by 1866 the Revd William Jackson, a clergyman without cure of souls, lived here. The 1871 census shows him here at the age of 53 with his wife Lucy and their three children, plus four servants (a cook, parlour maid, house maid, and under housemaid). In a cottage at the back of No. 1 lived the college servant Benjamin Woollams, a widower of 75, with his housekeeper.
On 24 October 1874 Jackson's Oxford Journal reported that “The house lately occupied by the Rev. Mr. Jackson, of Worcester College, has been enlarged, and will be occupied by the Professor of Mathematics, Mr. Paravicini.” Francis de Paravicini, tutor of Balliol College, was duly listed here in directories from 1874. The 1881 census shows him at the age of 38 living here with his wife Frances and their three servants.
In 1913 Frederick Parker Morrell’s son Philip Morrell (the husband of the infamous Lady Ottoline), transferred the property to his solicitor brother-in-law John Douglas Peel, who had been in partnership in the business since 1902.
There had been a solicitors’ office on this site for at least 165 years when in 1989 it was acquired by Balliol College (with a 25-year leaseback agreement in favour of the occupants, Morrell, Peel, & Gamlen, Solicitors, who remained until 1999).
From 2001 this building was the home of the Oxford Internet Institute which also expanded into Nos. 34 and 41 St Giles', but in 2025 it moved into the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities.
Occupants of 1 St Giles’ Street listed in censuses and directories |
|
1823–1902 |
Baker Morrell, Attorney (1823–1846) |
Baker Morrell Esq and James Morrell
jun. (1852) |
|
Frederick Joseph Morrell, William
Biddle, R.S. Hawkins, Frederick Joseph Morrell & Frederick Parker Morrell Morrell & Sons, Solicitors (1869) Francis de Paravicini, tutor of Balliol College (1874 to 1881) |
|
1902–1913 |
Morrell, Son, & Peel |
1914–1999 |
Morrell, Peel,
& Gamlen |
2001–2025 |
Oxford Internet Institute |
2025– |
Vacant |