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No. 15 (the lower shop on the right) probably dates from the mid-eighteenth century. It is a Grade II listed building (List Entry No. 1185348), and is owned by Oxford City Council. It is in St Michael-at-the-Northgate parish.

In 1772 a survey of every house in the city was taken in consequence of the Mileways Act of 1771. No. 15 was then in the occupation of a Mr Gardiner, and its frontage measured 5 yards 1 feet 3 inches.

The 1841 census shows Mrs Ann Norgrove (85) running a lodging house here with Frances Norgrove (45) and one servant. Two young independent gentlemen were lodging with them. She died at the beginning of January 1845.

At the time of the 1851 census, No. 15 was occupied by Sarah East, a widow of 38, who had four children aged from 2 to 11. She was described as a saddler employing one man and one apprentice; the “man” was evidently her brother, Richard Clapton, who lived in this house with her and is described as a saddler workman.

The watchmaker & jeweller Daniel Chapman was here by the time of the 1861 census, and lived over the shop with his wife and six children, and Thomas Hill Green (25) lodged with the family. William Tuckwell in Reminiscences of Oxford (1900) describes how Chapman discovered a Cetiosaurus at Kirtlington in 1868:

A few years later came another self-taught genius, Chapman, a watchmaker with a shop opposite Balliol, whose large and well-stocked marine aquarium, a thing of beauty at that time rare, attracted wondering visitors. He it was who discovered and rescued the monster Cetiosaurus at Kirtlington Station. He had dismounted from the train with his son on a botanising expedition just as the first fragment was disclosed by the pickaxe, found the foreman, stopped the digging, telegraphed for [Professor John] Phillips, who superintended the removal of the enormous bones to the Oxford Museum. The credit accrued to Phillips, no one mentioned Chapman. “The page slew the boar, the peer had the gloire.”

A forthcoming auction of the leasehold of this shop was advertised thus in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 31 August 1878:

The valuable BUSINESS PREMISES, No. 15 Broad-street, Oxford, now occupied by Mr. Chapman, watchmaker, containing kitchen and cellar in the basement, shop and sitting room on the ground floor, two rooms on the first floor and two ditto on the second floor, and having a good yard (with w.c., &c.) at the back; also a COTTAGE (at end of yard) and connected with House by a covered way, containing three rooms.

The Property is held by lease from the City of Oxford, for a term of 40 years, from September 1877, subject to a quit rent of £1 5s.; capon money, 2s. 6d.; and acquittance, 8d.

Daniel Chapman was still living and working here as a watchmaker at the time of the 1881 and 1891 censuses.

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Buol's Restaurant from 1893

Buol's Restaurant, which also called itself the Swiss Café, was at 15 Broad Street from 1893 to 1915. In 1895 it offered “table d'hôte” from 1 to 3pm at 2s. 6d., and dinner from 6 to 9pm. On 5 October that year J. G. Buol advertised that extensive dining rooms had recently been added to this establishment.

At the time of the 1901 census Miss Julia Decastel (25), the restaurant manager, lived here with two shop assistants, a cook, a still room maid, five pastry cooks (all ten of whom were Swiss nationals), plus an Italian shop assistant and an English kitchen porter.

The advertisement on the right comes from Alden’s Oxford Directory of 1906, when Buol had restaurants both here and at 21 Cornmarket

 

The 1911 census shows three cooks (one of them Swiss), a Swiss pastry cook, and a shop assistant living in the seven-roomed accommodation at No. 15.