30 Holywell Street is a seventeenth-century house refashioned in the eighteenth century. It is owned by Harris Manchester College.
It is a Grade II Listed Building (1047229), with the following description:
No 30 SP 5106 NE 6/199 12.1.54. II GV 2.
House. RCHM 201. C17 refashioned in C18. Two-storeyed plastered timber-framed front with cellars and two large gabled dormers. Behind these gables is another central gable visible behind a Welsh slate roof. There are brick stacks. On the East is a coachway or "broad gate" (see Antiq Jnl 27 (1947), p. 146, Plate XXIc). The ground floor has a three-light casement window in a wood frame with shutters, and the doorway has a modern and plain frame. The first floor has one slightly projecting three-light C18 sash window with a flower-box rail. In each of the dormers is a sash window in a wood frame.
Interior: RCHM p. 180b. Includes a C18 fire-place.
The livery stables behind No. 30
The large gateway to the right of No. 30 led to livery stables, which can be seen stretching far to the north in the 1876 OS map (below right).
James Woodforde of New College wrote in his diary on 25 January 1764, “I put up my Horse at Jacksons in Holliwell, who keeps a Livery stable”. The 1772 Survey of Oxford shows that Mr Jackson lived here at No. 30 adjoining his stables.
Woodforde described his stabling arrangements more fully on 1 June 1774: “My Mare is to remain in Oxford, & is to be had to Jacksons Livery Stable to Morrow Morning in Holliwell. I agreed to give Jackson per Week — 3. feeds a day 8: 0.”
by 1808 T. Barnett senior was the livery stable keeper here. In December 1836 he announced that he had declined business in favour of Charles Symonds.
These were Symonds' stables from the 1836 to 1871. On 1 August 1840 he advertised that he had also been the proprietor of the Original Blenheim Coach between Chipping Norton and Oxford. His pasture lands were in the Summertown area.
Symonds lived in the adjoining house at No. 30 until after the 1851 census, but from 1861 he lived at No. 33 and his foreman lived here.
Symonds married Emily Whitman in 1840 and they had three children baptised at Holywell Church: Frederick Murray Symonds on 13 November 1842, Georgina Blanche Symonds on 21 January 1844, and Emmeline Constance Symonds on 12 November 1848.
Charles Symonds had moved to 33 Holywell Street by 1861 but held on to the stables. He retired from business in 1884, and was living at 73 Banbury Road when he died at the age of 75 in 1888 and was buried in Holywell Cemetery and Emily in 1901.
Their daughter Georgina married the actor Patrick Alexander Hale Munro in Holywell Church on 2 January 1868, and Emmeline married Captain Robert James Dallin on 3 October 1872. Their son Frederick (who had been matriculated at the University of Oxford by The Queen's College in 1861) married Frances Ellen Pinkerton near the beginning of 1871 and was was Rector of Saxelbury from 1880.
Symonds’ livery stables appear to have been the best in Oxford in the mid- to late nineteenth century. In Cuthbert Bede’s The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green (1854), Charles Larkyns says to Verdant, “We’ll go to Symonds’: I keep my hack there and you can depend upon having a good one.” He goes on to say, “Well come along, Verdant, we’ll go to Charley Symonds’ and get our hacks. You can meet us Harry, just over the Maudlin Bridge; and we’ll have a canter along the Henley road.” It continues:
So they made their way to Holywell Street, and turned under a gateway, and up a paved yard, to the stables. The upper part of the yard was littered down with straw, and covered in by a light, open roof; and in the stables there was accommodation for a hundred horses. At the back of the stables, and separated from the Wadham Gardens by a narrow lane, was a paddock; and here they found Mr. Fosbrooke, and one or two of his friends, inspecting the leaping abilities of a fine hunter, which one of the stable-boys was taking backwards and forwards over the hurdles and fences erected for that purpose.
The drawing below of Charles Symonds’ stables (looking south towards Holywell Street, with New College bell tower behind) is taken from that book:
The photograph below, taken from inside Harris Manchester College, shows the gateway on to Holywell Street that is shown in the distance in the above engraving.
From 1872 to c.1891 these livery stables were run by William Joseph Wheeler, who lived in the adjoining house (although Charles Symonds did not retire from business until 1884).
Rudyard Kipling in Plain Tales from the Hills (1891) wrote that McIntosh Jellaludin when drunk asked, “I say, have you spoken to Symonds about the mare’s knees?” (Kipling then added that “Charley Symonds’ stable” was half a mile away across the paddocks from Mesopotamia and six thousand miles away from where they were in Central Asia.)
The next owner was William Franklin. He was one of the first businesses in Oxford to get a telephone, and he had the number 6 in 1895. He died at the age of 63 in 1897.
Below: photograph of No. 30 in 1900 (Historic England CC72/01916):
Around 1915 The University & County Posting Stables Ltd were here.
The end of the stables came at the beginning of the 1920s when Layton Garages operated from here.
From 1902 the house at No. 30 was occupied by private individuals.
Permission was granted in 1991 for the demolition of the rear wing of No. 30 and the erection of sports facilities for Harris Manchester College (then simply named Manchester College): 91/00694/L
30 Holywell Street in the censuses
1841
The 1841 census for Holywell does not give house numbers, but it is possible to deduce where people listed that year lived by examining directory entries between 1839 and 1842 and later censuses
Charles Symonds (23), a stable keeper, lived here with Emily (15) and one female servant.
1851
Charles Symonds (36), a livery stable keeper, still lived here with his wife Emily (30) and two servants.
1861
Thomas Day (49), a Gloucestershire-born ostler, lived here with his wife Ann and children Thomas (17, clerk in a solicitor’s office), Henry (12), Mary Ann (7). They had one servant.
1871
The house is listed as unoccupied.
1881
William Joseph Wheeler (44), a horse dealer, lived here with his wife Harriett (32) and his children Alice (8), William (7), Edith (3), Gertrude (1), and Emily (5 months). They had one general servant and a nurse.
1891
William Joseph Wheeler (54) was still a horse dealer here, living with his wife Harriet (40) and their children Alice (17), William (16), Edith (13), Gertrude (11), Emily (9), Violet (7), Charles (5), and Reginald (2). They had one servant.
1901
The head of the household (Edgar Frederick Carritt) was away, but his brother-in-law, John Lyttleton Etty (25), who was a secondary schoolmaster, was at home with two servants (a housemaid and a cook).
1911
Naser Odeh, a Turkish national born in Palestine and now Curate of Warkworth, Northants, lived here with his wife Mary (64) and his daughter Margaret (25). They had one servant. Three years later in 1914 Margaret Odeh married the artist Paul Nash.
1921
George Walter Young (68), a widowed private tutor, was living here with his unmarried daughter Mabel (43) and their servant.
1939 Register
The retired science master Harold S. Young was listed here with Miss Mabel R. Young.
Occupants of 30 Holywell Street listed in directories etc. |
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| No. 30 | Yard behind No. 30 |
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1772 |
Frontage: 10 yds 0 ft 9 in |
|
By 1808– 1836 |
T. Barnett senior |
|
1836–1871 |
Charles Symonds 1839–1851 Thomas Day in 1861 Mrs Day in 1861 and 1871 Thomas Day |
Charles Symonds, |
1872–1889 |
William Joseph Wheeler |
W. Wheeler |
1894 |
Henry Harris |
William Franklin Robert Anstee (Vine Cottage) |
1896–1898 |
William George Telling Bedford |
|
1899 |
Mrs Franklin |
Harold J. Fletcher |
1902–1905 |
Edgar Frederick Carrett, M.A. |
…
|
1907–1908 |
Harold Brewer Hartley |
… |
1909–1911 |
Rev. Naser Odeh |
… |
1914–1915+ |
George Walter Young, M.A. Harold Spencer Young |
The University & County Posting Stables Ltd |
1921–1927 |
The Layton Garages |
|
1935–1962 |
No listing |
|
1964–1966 |
Mrs P. E. Waller |
|
1967–1976 |
Harold W. Spicer, M.A. |
|
Today |
Part of Harris Manchester College |
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