Oxford Ghost Signs: Flory's Commercial Hotel at 4 Becket Street
FLORY'S
COMMERCIAL
HOTEL
The eponymous Mrs Flory
Mrs Flory was born Mary Ann Bird at Souldern in Oxfordshire near the beginning of 1836. She married the tailor Henry Flory in Oxford in 1866 and at the time of the 1871 and 1881 censuses they were living at 62 St Aldate's Street with their children. Henry died there at the age of 52 in February 1882.
In 1891 Mrs Flory was living at 7 Cripley Road with three of her children. She described herself as a boarding house keeper, and on census night two boarders and three lodgers were at that house.
By 1895 she had moved to 4 Becket Street, and Kelly's Directory that year listed her as running a temperance boarding house at that address. In 1899 it was more grandly described as a temperance hotel. .
In the 1901 census Mrs Flory described herself as a commercial hotel proprietor, working on her own account at home at 4 Becket Street. Two of her children were still living with her, but there were no guests staying at the hotel on census night.
Mary Ann Flory died at the age of 68 in December 1904.
The building after 1904
In 1914 Frank George Cattle was running the temperance hotel at both Nos. 4 & 5 Becket Street. By the time of the 1921 census his wife Sarah Alice Cattle (45), who was born Sarah Alice Berry in Old Headington, was described as the temperance hotel proprietor here, while her husband Frank (48) worked as a linotype operator at the Oxford Times office in Red Lion Square. She continued to run the hotel to at least 1924.
In 1927 and 1928 it was described as a commercial hotel rather than a temperance hotel, and was run by Mrs A. Alice Horne.
John Long ran the commercial hotel at 4 & 5 Becket Street from 1930 to 1941, and from 1938 to 1941 it was described in directories as Flory's Commercial Hotel, showing that its old name still lingered on. The 1939 Register shows John Long (a widower born on 17 March 1879) living on the premises: he stated that he was a hotel proprietor and a seaman pensioner. Also living there was Miss Lilian Coleman, described as a domestic cook.
From 1943 the premises are listed as the Great Western Railway Staff Hotel.
As the hotel changed from a temperance hotel to a commercial one around 1920, the sign may have been painted around that time. It certainly pre-dates 1943.
In October 2020 Aspire Oxfordshire was granted temporary planning permission to use 4 & 5 Becket Street as a large house in multiple occupation for homeless people, but full retrospective planning permission for a change of use from guest house to a large HMO was refused in February 2024 (23/02945/FUL). In July 2024 Aspire was granted retrospective planning application for an extension of the temporary HMO permission to 31 December 2025 (24/01118/FUL) to align with the expiry date of the head lease of 1–5 Beckett Street, which is held by Nuffield College. Aspire submitted a retrospective plan for change of use to large HMO (26/01414/FUL) was approved in August 2026.
4 & 5 Becket Street in November 2023
One of the characters in Simon Mason, Lost and Never Found (Quercus Publishing, 2024) lives here. He writes:
The narrow, gloomy road was sunk between the screen of spindly trees fronting the car park and a row of tall Victorian tenements used as guest houses and lodgings, the dirty brickwork of one still painted with the ancient words Flory's Commercial Hotel, a leftover sign for a leftover place.