No. 54: Kettell Hall
Kettell (or Kettel or Kettle) Hall is the stone house attached to the western side of Blackwell’s Local Bookshop that is now part of Trinity College.
It dates from about 1620, and is a Grade II* listed building (List Entry No. 1230901). It has always been in St Mary Magdalen parish.
Kettell Hall was a private house when numbers were allocated to Broad Street in the 1840s, and it was given the number 54.
Since 1883 it has been part of Trinity College.
The house that originally stood here, outside the north wall and ditch, was called Perles Hall, after a family of the name of Perles or Peverell, and its name was corrupted to Perilous Hall, or Aula Periculosa. In 1325 King Edward II gave this hall to Oriel College.
In 1597 a lease on the original house here was granted to George Caulfield, five times Member of Parliament for Oxford and then its Recorder. Anthony Wood in 1641 wrote that ten baptisms in the parish register of St Mary Magdalen were of “the children of Georg Cawfield recorder of the citie of Oxon, living somtimes in that house in Canditch which was pulled down for the building of Kettell Hall…”
The engraving below is taken from an 1834 handbook, which states:
Kettel [sic] hall still remains on the north side of Broad street; built in 1615 by Dr. Ralph Kettel, president of Trinity college, for the use of students, on the site of an ancient hall called Perles, and by corruption Perilous hall; “Aula Periculosa”; mentioned by that name so early as the reign of Edward I. It was so called from a family of the name of Perles, or Peverells; many of whom occur in the Testa de Nevill.
By 1615 the Perles Hall, now ruinous, was leased from Oriel College by Ralph Kettell (President of Trinity College from 1599 until his death in 1643), and in that year he pulled it down and built the present hall that still bears his name here, “to the end that it might be a place for the reception of Commoners of Trinity, and for their convenience a door was made through the wall parting the garden of it from Trinity grove, and there was no entrance from the street”.
On his death in 1643 the President's nephew, Fanshawe Kettell, obtained a lease of this house. He paid tax on sixteen hearths here in 1665. Anthony Wood reports that during this period a Mr Chamberlain died at Kettell Hall in June 1661, allegedly at the age of 110, and was taken back to Warwickshire to be buried.
By 1665 Trinity College held the leasehold, and it was let out. In 1696 Lucy Werg paid tax at “Kettle Hall”.
Until 1714 leases of Kettell Hall were granted to various members of the Finch family. On 15 April that year Balliol College was on the point of buying the building, but in the nick of time Trinity College managed to seal articles with the vendor, William Finch of the Rookery in Headington, for this house.
In 1754 Dr Johnson stayed for six weeks in Kettell Hall.
By 1766 Kettell Hall was occupied by James Thomson, an “eminent carpenter and cabinet-maker”, whose wife died here on 27 September that year. In 1772 a survey of every house in the city was taken in consequence of the Mileways Act of 1771, and “Mr Thompson” was duly listed at No. 54, which had a frontage measuring 9 yards 2 feet 9 inches. Thomson retired in 1785, and an advertisement in Jackson’s Oxford Journal on 12 November that year advertised all his property for sale, followed by: “Kettle Hall, Broad Street, lately occupied by Mr Thomson, carpenter, to let. Enquires to Hart, Alfred’s Head.”
Kettell Hall was next occupied by a wine merchant called Clark, and the following advertisement appeared in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 27 January 1787:
WINES.
MR. CLARK, at Kettle Hall, in Broad Street, Oxford, takes this Method to acquaint Gentlemen, that he has a large Quantity of OLD PORT, that has been in Bottle for two Years; which he sells, Bottles included, at 1l. 5s. per Dozen; fine Old Sherry, at 1l. 8s.
The Revd Hanbury lived at Kettell Hall in Broad Street in in 1814.
The surgeon Charles Wingfield lived here from c.1822. At the time of the 1841 census he was living here with his wife Hannah, her sister Mrs Ann Brancher, Hannah Brancher, Catherine Humphreys, Fanny Humphreys, and Catherine Popham, plus five servants. Dr Wingfield died from cholera in 1846,
At the time of the 1851 census Kettell Hall was occupied by his widow, Hannah Wingfield ( 61), and her unmarried sister Ann J. Brancker: they were both described as fundholders, and were waited on by a footman, cook, housemaid, and a general servant. Mrs Wingfield was away at the time of the 1861 census and the house was occupied by her three servants.
Mrs Wingfield spent 24 years as a widow at Kettell Hall, until her death on 20 January 1870 at the age of 81. Just before her death she provided half the money for the building of the Wingfield Convalescent Home in Headington, which was opened in 1872 and has evolved into the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre.
The 1871 census shows Kettell Hall occupied by William Stubbs, the Regius Professor of Modern History, and his wife and three children, plus a cook, housemaid, and nurse. The family was still here at the time of the 1881 census.
In 1883 Trinity College purchased the freehold of the building from Oriel College, and on 11 October 1884 Jackson's Oxford Journal reported that, “The building known as Kettle Hall, in Broad-street, has had considerable additions, and the interior has been renovated. The sanitary arrangements are on the most approved principles.”
The Revd John Henry Mee, Mus.Doc., the Corypheus Precentor of Music in the University is listed at Kettell Hall in directories from 1884 to 1898. On 4 February 1888 Jackson's Oxford Journal reported that he was summoned for allowing its chimney to catch fire and was fined 1s., with 6s. costs. On 15 December 1894 it reported verbatim a paper on the “History of Kettel Hall” that Mrs Mee had recently delivered to the Oxford Architectural & Historical Society. The Mee family were away at the time of the 1891 census and only their two servants were in residence.
Part of Kettell Hall appears to have been used simultaneously by Trinity College for teaching. Jackson's Oxford Journal reported on 16 October 1886:
A lecture room, 34ft. by 18ft., has been added to Kettle Hall. It is built with Bath stone dressings and Gibraltar facings. The inside is partly filled up with very ancient oak panelling, and it is illuminated with a sunlight in the ceiling. Messrs. Symm and Co. were the builders.
Kettell Hall became a full part of the college in 1898 and is therefore not listed in the 1901 and 1911 censuses. it is now the oldest building in Trinity College’s front quadrangle.
The eponymous Dr Ralph Kettell
The following picture of Kettell is given by John Aubrey in Brief Lives (1669–96):
He was a very tall well growne man. His gowne and surplice and hood being on, he had a terrible gigantique aspect, with his sharp grey eies.
He had a very venerable presence, and was an excellent governour. One of his maximes of governing was to keepe-downe the juvenilis impetus.
Mr. —, one of the fellowes, was wont to say, that Dr. Kettel’s braine was like a hasty-pudding, where there was memorie, judgement, and phancy all stirred together. He had all these faculties in great measure, but they were all just so jumbled together.
A neighbour of mine told me he heard him preach once in St. Marie’s Church. I know not whether this was the only time or no that he used this following way of conclusion: – “But now I see it is time for me to shutt up my booke, for I see the doctors’ men come-in wiping of their beardes from the ale-house” — (He could from the pulpit plainly see them and ’twas their custome in sermon to go there, and about the end of sermon to returne to wayte on their masters).
The Doctor’s fashion was to goe up and down the college, and peepe in at the key-holes to see whether the boyes did follow their bookes or no.
He observed that the howses that had the smallest beer had most drunkards, for it forced them to goe into the town to comfort their stomachs; wherfore Dr Kettle alwayes had in his College excellent beer, not better to be had in Oxon.
He was irreconcileable to long haire; called them hairy scalpes, and as for periwigges (which were then very rarely worne) he beleeved them to be the scalpes of men cutt off after they were hanged, and so tanned and dressed for use. When he observed the scolars’ haire longer than ordinary (especially if they were scholars of the howse), he would bring a pair of cizers in his muffe (which he commonly wore), and woe be to them that sate on the outside of the table. I remember he cutt Mr. Radford’s haire with the knife that chipps the bread on the buttery-hatch.
He dragg’d with one (i.e. right) foot a little, by which he gave warning (like the rattlesnake) of his comeing.
Upon Trinity Sunday he would commonly preach at the Colledge, whither a number of the scholars of other howses would come, to laugh at him.
He was a person of great charity. In his college, where he observed diligent boyes that he ghessed had but a slender exhibition from their friends, he would many times putt money in at their windowes; that his right hand did not know what his left did.
Dr. Kettle was wont to say that “Seneca writes, as a boare does pisse”, scilicet, by jirkes.
He sang a shrill high treble; but there was one (J. Hoskyns) who had a higher, and would play the wag with the Dr. to make him straine his voice up to his.
When he scolded at the idle young boies of his colledge, he used these names, viz. Turds, Tarrarags (these were the worst sort, rude raskells), Rascal-Jacks, Blindcinques, Scobberlotchers (these did no hurt, were sober, but went idleing about the grove with their hands in their pocketts, and telling the number of trees there, or so).
Tis probable this venerable Dr. might have lived some yeares longer, and finisht his century, had not those civill warres come on: which much grieved him, that was wont to be absolute in the colledge, to be affronted and disrespected by rude soldiers. The dissoluteness of the times, as I have sayd, grieving the good old Doctor, his dayes were shortned, and dyed (July) anno Domini 1643.