St Giles’ Home

Oxford History home

---

TAKE A TOUR

St Giles’ Fair

General History

Old pictures

Remembrance

Contact/Search

---

The present house at No. 52 was built in 1868. It is a Grade II listed building (List Entry No. 1047107). It lies in St Giles' parish.

The former building

The 1772 survey shows the frontage of the earlier house on this narrow site as being exactly 4 yards: it was then in the occupation of Mr Green junior.

Mrs Mary Whitbread ran a registry office for servants in the former house on this site by 1859. At the time of the 1861 census, she was a widow of 56 and lived here with her son Alfred Hornsey Whitbread, a 17-year-old lawyer’s office clerk, and a lodger. Alfred died here on 28 April 1868 at the age of 24 “after a long illness”, and his mother moved out soon afterwards. On 27 August 1864, while Mrs Whitbread leased these premises, Jackson's Oxford Journal announced that an auction of this and 25 other houses in Oxford (directed by the Trustees of William Fletcher) would soon take place.

The present building

Jackson’s Oxford Journal reported in 1868: “In St Giles’s a neat house has been built in place of the quaint old tenement occupied by Mrs. Whitbread. Of this Mr. J. Curtis, Pembroke-street, was the builder, the plans being furnished by Mr. Tanner, a gentleman in the Oxford office of Mr. Buckeridge.”

The first occupant of the present building was the Polish-born watchmaker & jeweller, Israel Morris Levi, whose former shop at 66 St Giles’ Street was demolished in 1868, the same year that this shop was built. At the time of the 1871 census he was living here with his wife Selena, plus a student lodger, and one servant. Selena died at the age of 53 near the beginning of 1872, and later that year he married his second wife Sarah Harris in London. In 1881 Israel Levi was still working here at the age of 65 and living with Sarah and their young servant. He died in 1890, and the premises above the shop were unoccupied at the time of the 1891 census.

Frank Matthews opened a tobacconist's shop here in 18i96, but died at the age of 39 near the beginning of 18i98. The 1901 census shows his widow Harriet Matthews (38) as the tobacconist living here with her two children and a housekeeper and a servant. In 1911 she was still here with her son Reginald, who worked as a railway clerk.

The 1921 census shows the Constance Louisa O'Sullivan (60) living at No. 52, with her 18-year-old son Arthur Adrian O'Sullivan, who was in full-time education, paying a visit. She was the widow of Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan, who had been Acting Resident Councillor of Penang in 1899. She answered the questions on the census form facetiously, describing herself as a maid of all work on these premises from 7am to 12 midnight most days, and her reply to the “Number of children under sixteen years of age” was "None Thank Heaven!”.