No. 37: Oxford Edge
37 St Giles was built in about 1789 on the north part of a timber-yard. It is a Grade II listed building (List Reference No. 1047142) and lies in St Giles' parish.
The house passed to the Dr Lee’s Trust in 1894, and from that date until 2006 the Dr Lee’s Readers at Christ Church lived here. It is still owned by that college.
In the early eighteenth century the carpenter Edward Riggins had a timber yard on the site of the present 37 and 37a St Giles. In 1739 he took on as an apprentice Vincent Shortland, the son of yeoman Thomas Shortland of Helmdon in Northants. Shortland later married Riggins’s daughter Elizabeth and became a partner in the business; and he took it over completely in December 1756 when Edward Riggins’s son Richard died.
In 1772 a survey of every house in the city was taken in consequence of the Mileways Act of 1771. The timber-yard on the site of Nos. 37 and 37A was recorded as being in the occupation of Vincent Shortland, with its frontage measuring 31 yards 1 feet 6 inches. Vincent’s home was nearby at 40 St Giles', and only Coster’s yard and stable lay between his house and place of work.
Shortland became a council chamberlain in 1760 and Mayor for the first time in 1780. In 1783 he took on as his last apprentice his own son, and he probably retired from the carpentry business in 1789 when this apprenticeship was nearing its end. It was around this time that he built the present No. 37 as a fine home suitable for a retired gentleman with civic responsibilities. (A house in St Giles “late in occupation of Vincent Shortland” is advertised to let in Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 10 October 1789, and it seems likely that this would have been Riggins’s old house at 40 St Giles.)
Shortland became an Alderman in 1791 and served a second term as Mayor in 1794. He died in 1801. His son, Vincent John Shortland, inherited his property in St Giles and (just two months after his father’s death) married Mary Maria Wentworth at St George’s, Hanover Square. They had their first two children baptised in Kidlington in May 1803 and August 1804, and then another five at St Giles’ Church between 1805 and 1812. It appears that they used this house (and later possibly another) in St Giles' as their town house and a country house in Kidlington. Vincent John is still described as “of St Giles’s” when his son matriculated at the University of Oxford in 1824 , and “of Kidlington” when he died in Suffolk in 1831. Although he had been apprenticed to his father as a carpenter, he seems to have lived the life of a gentleman, and is always described as such.
Vincent John Shortland’s sister Mary continued to live in St Giles’ Street for a short period after her father’s death, but in 1805 she married William Turner, a widowed farmer of Shipton-on-Cherwell, at St Giles’ Church. (She had ten children in Shipton and died there in 1840.)
In 1808 Vincent John Shortland“released” the house and grounds in St Giles to Daniel Turner, Esq. (who was not obviously a relation of his brother-in-law William Turner). At about this time No. 37A was built to the south, probably by the Turners: they appear to have lived in the new house and rented out No. 37.
On 15 June 1816 the following advertisement appeared in Jackson's Oxford Journal:
TO be LET or SOLD, situated in a Garden in St. Giles's, Oxford, with Land Tax redeemed, and immediate possession,–A good FREEHOLD HOUSE, fit for the residence of a genteel family; consisting of four sitting rooms on the ground floor, six chambers, and two attics, with convenient offices, and good cellars.
Enquire of Mr. Shortland, Kidlington.
In the 1830s Dr John Kidd (1775–1851), a well-known Oxford physician who had been appointed Aldrichian Professor of Chemistry in 1803, Lee’s Reader in Anatomy in 1816, and Keeper of the Radcliffe Library in 1834, took over 37 St Giles's Street, and in 1835 he gave a large dinner party there after a Council meeting of the British Medical Association. He must have held on to his house in Cornmarket, however, as he spent census night there in 1841 with his wife Isabella and his two youngest daughters Frances and Susan. (Daniel Turner, the owner of the house, is listed at No. 37, but this is more likely to be 37A.) Daniel Turner died at the age of 85 in 1843, and his daughters, the Misses Caroline and Emma Turner, immediately conveyed the ownership of this house to Dr Kidd, and his family moved in more permanently. He is listed at this house in the Post Office Directory of Oxfordshire and Berkshire 1847.
The 1851 census shows Dr Kidd (76) in retirement at No. 37 with his wife Isabella, his two youngest daughters, and his wife’s sister Miss Agrilla Savery, plus two servants. In his Reminiscences of Oxford, William Tuckwell says that Dr. Kidd was “a sensible, homely creature”, the first medical professor to abandon the massive gold-headed cane: he was a little man, “trotting about the streets in a ‘spencer’, a tailless greatcoat then becoming obsolete, and worn only by himself and Dr Macbride”.
Dr Kidd died on 17 September 1851 and was buried at St Giles' Church on 22 September: his gravestone is at the back of the church, near the Banbury Road. At the time of the 1861 census the head of the household was his wife Isabella, aged 86, then living here with all four of their daughters — Isabella Kidd, Beatrice Wilson (a widow), Frances Kidd, and Susan Kidd — plus a cook and two housemaids.
Mrs Isabella Rebekah Kidd died here at the age of 8 on 28 April 1863 and was buried in St Sepulchre's Cemetery: see grave.
The 1871 census shows Dr Kidd's four daughters living here with a nurse and three servants. Frances died on 29 September that year, followed by Isabella on 24 November 1873 and Beatrice on 1 February 1874: see second grave.
In 1881 Dr Kidd's youngest daughter, Miss Susan Kidd (66), lived alone here at No. 37 with her housekeeper’s family (who may occupied the premises at the back of the house) and two servants. In 1891 she was here with just her servants. She was the last of the four sisters to die. Jackson’s Oxford Journal reported on 15 December 1894, “On Friday last Miss Susan Kidd died at 37, St Giles’, where she had resided upwards of forty-five years…. By the will of the late Dr Kidd, the house, 37, St. Giles’s, now belongs to Christ Church.”
From 1894 to 2006 the house was occupied by a succession senior members of Christ Church, including:
- John Barclay-Thomson, the Lee's Lecturer in Anatomy, lived here from 1896 to c.1915, but at the time of the 1901 census only his wife Ada was at home with two servants, and in 1911 only their cook, housemaid, and parlourmaid were at home.
- Peter Schufeldt was here from c.1918 to 1921.
- Trevor Braby Heaton, the Lee's Reader in Anatomy, was here from 1921 to 1930. The 1921 census lists him here with his wife Constance and their cook, parlourmaid, and housemaid.
- Col. Sir Harold Franz Passawer Percival, Student (= Fellow) and Steward of Christ Church, lived here from 1930 to 1943. The 1939 Register lists him here, described as the College Bursar, with his wife Constance, plus their cook and parlourmaid. He died here on 24 April 1944
On 17 April 2008 planning permission was granted to Christ Church to convert the main part of the building into a house in multiple occupation for ten students (08/00443/FUL). On 13 January 2009 the college leased the building to the Washington International Studies Council who used it for the accommodation of their students.
The property reverted to Christ Church on 28 September 2024 when the WISC lease expired, and the college was granted planning permission for change of use from House in Multiple Occupation to academic teaching and office accommodation for its own use as the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation for the University of Oxford (24/01355/FUL).
The withdrawn planning application 25/03388/FUL provides an illustrated history of 37 St Giles' Street in the Heritage impact assessment (under the Documents tab).
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Occupants of 37 St Giles’ Street listed in censuses and directories |
|
By 1835–1894 |
John Kidd, Physician (to 1851) Mrs (Isabella) Kidd (1851–1963) |
1896–1915 |
John Barclay-Thompson,
Mus.B. |
1918–1921 |
Peter Shufeldt |
1921–1929 |
Trevor Braby Heaton |
1930–1943 |
Col. Sir Harold Franz Passawer
Percival |
1945 |
John Richard O’Brien, B.A., B.M., B.Ch. |
1947 |
Arthur William Mickle Ellis |
1949–1954 |
John Steven Watson |
1955–1957 |
Anthony Clifford Allison |
1962–1973 |
Paul W. Kent |
1974–2006 |
Professor
Richard P. Wayne |
2007–2024 |
Washington International Studies Council |
2025–present |
Oxford Edge |
The servants’ quarters at the rear of the house were converted into offices in about 1960 (planning application 59/07996/A_H) , and have been occupied by the following businesses:
- 1960–1976+: Surman & Chilton
Chartered Architects & Diocesan Surveyors
(John Maxwell Surman and Edwin R. Chilton) - 1996–2006: Montgomery Architects (formerly Howes, Allen, & Montgomery)
Additional information kindly provided by Richard & Brenda Wayne