N0. 10 ST. MICHAEL STREET, OXFORD An architectural and historical account by DAVID STURDY (35 WOODFIELD DRIVE, CHARLBURY OX7 3SE Tel 01608 810743) INTRODUCTION No 10 St Michael Street, a student residence of the Washington International Studies Council for young Americans in Oxford, stands a few yards from Cornmarket, the city's main shopping street for the last thousand years. The house is a property of the City of Oxford, which owns all the north side of the street and indeed the whole city block. The City Gaoler built it in about 1560, part of a row of houses for rental or perhaps for good-conduct prisoners. From the 1650s a leading lawyer and then a prosperous maltster lived there. In 1680 it was divided up and rented out as a tenement, going badly downhill to become a bakery flour-store in the mid 1700s. In about 1820 it was reconstructed in its present form with a simple Regency stucco front, but much of the original solid oak frame survives. It has never had a garden. ARCHAEOLOGY AND EARLY HISTORY: 9th to 16th centuries Oxford began as a frontier fort in the 800s. Other cities, like Detroit or Pittsburgh in the 18th century, began the same way. The north side of St. Michael Street marks the line of an Anglo-Saxon rampart of the late 890s, made of turf and gravel with a log and plank stockade. In about the 13th century, the stone City Wall was built to replace the rampart. We can see a fine stretch of this medieval stone wall in New College Gardens. The back wall of No 10 stands on the exact line of both the early timber stockade and the medieval wall that replaced it. The depth of the house from front to back represents the thickness of the rampart, which ran along the north side of St Michael Street and Ship Street, streets which have survived as "fossils" of the city's ancient defences, just as Wall Street marks the early 17th-century Dutch defence of New Amsterdam, later New York. No 10 was built up against the Wall in about the 1560s; in the 1820s, to make more space in the house, the Wall was taken out. DOCUMENTATION: the 16th century In the City's first lease-book, begun in 1578, we can identify No.10 as part of a row of houses in a 21-year lease of 1590 to Frideswide Edge, widow, described as "One roome of houssinge of late used as a parlor by Richard Edge deceased, late husband unto the said Frideswide (Nos 24) and also fower (four) other houses or Cottags" (Nos. 6-10 or 6-16). The population of Oxford grew steadily in the 1560s and '70s, after an all-time low in the 1540s and '50s. To the east, the Town Ditch south of Broad Street was filled with trash by 1550, when it was leased out by the City to be fenced in by a new tenant. Just to the north of No 10 the Ditch south of George Street was enclosed in the 1570s by a group of leading citizens, including the deputy Town Clerk, to make gardens later developed with cottages and houses. By this time the City authorities clearly considered their old defences to have no military value. From 1578 the Town Clerk recorded all property-transactions on this publicly owned land in a series of large calf-bound Lease-books. They involved all the houses on the north side of St Michael Street, still City property today, and the rest of the block, including all the stores on the south side of George Street, which stand on the filling of the old Ditch. Before the 1840s, when the first street directories begin, the successive lessees of City land have to be taken from the manuscript Lease-books. I have done this in detail from 1578 to 1680, continuing with a summary list of later lessees from the City Rent-books (printed in H.E. Salter's Oxford City Properties (1926), pp.1-97). I have supplemented this basic list of names with the actual residents from the 1670s, given in the manuscript Poor-rate Books of the parish of St Michael at the Northgate (in the County Record Office), with details from the Parish Registers (available in typescript in the County Record Office and the Oxfordshire Local Studies Centre) and from the printed volumes of Oxford Council Acts 1583-1626; 1626-1665; 1666-1701 &c. Further work on manuscript sources, such as the later City Lease-books, and the Wills and Inventories in the Archdeacon's Court, will fill out the story further. STRUCTURE OF THE HOUSE: the 16th century Nos 2-10 St Michael Street is a continuous range of timber-framed building, first documented (as we have seen) in 1590 as five houses, and now containing the Arcadia gift shop, the Nosebag Restaurant, Morris Hairdressers and Gillman & Soame photography. The range, now 76 feet long, seems to have continued further west beyond No 10. It was originally built up against the City Wall and each house had one large upper room open to the roof and a lower room and basement below. Extra rooms have been built later in the roof-space of all the houses and-at No 10 the large upper and lower rooms have been subdivided into smaller front and back rooms. Within the added top floor rooms of No 10 we can see the original steep-pitched main roof-timbers front and back, in the two side walls and in the central partition between the two front rooms. One original "wind-brace" remains above the stairs in the north-west corner of the house and the sawn-off ends or sockets for several more can be seen. In about 1820 the thick medieval stone City Wall, against which the house was built, was taken out (in an elaborate underpinning operation) and replaced by the present thin brick rear wall. WISC's plumbers revealed the "ghost" of the old City Wall in December 1993, when they took up some floor-boards to get at the pipes. The main beam across the centre of the ground floor ceiling, which has been cased in and plastered over to appear to run to the rear wall, actually ends about 3 feet short of the rear wall, and is bracketed and bolted onto transverse deal joists. The gap between the end of the beam and the bricks of the rear wall shows that the medieval stone Wall was a little under 4 feet thick here when the house was built against it. The arrangement of the house, with front and back rooms on each floor must also date from about 1820. Evidence for the original plan with large rooms can be seen on the ground floor and basement, where the ceilings are crossed by massive chamfered "summer-beams" typical of the 16th century. Where these beams meet the front and rear walls we see the usual "stops"; but where they cross the central partition between the front and back rooms, extra fillets and fake "stops" have been added to the beams, clearly indicating that the partition is not original but a later insertion. The south or front wall is oak-framed on the two main floors, probably of deal studs on the added top floor and stone in the basement. The west wall, whose flimsy timbers were exposed in the refurbishment, is clearly not original; presumably the long range once continued further west. The east wall is largely made up of two 19th century chimney-breasts of rubble with brick stacks above. Thus, while the original south wall and the roof timbers are original, the west, north and east walls have been replaced. The row of houses, now Nos 2-10, was built in two stages, as we can see by the change of level between Nos 2-6 and the slightly taller Nos 8-10. This is particularly clear in the main dining room of the Nosebag Restaurant, which occupies the main upper floor of Nos 6 and 8. The solid oak framing of the two parts of the range, with slight differences in the carpentry, has been well exposed here and can be examined in detail. RICHARD EDGE, merchant and gaol-keeper, 1560s-80s Richard Edge (or Hedges) became a Freeman of the City in 1550, that is, he could run a business unimpeded by City officials and vote at local and national elections; he was probably in his mid twenties or early thirties at this time. In 1554 he was elected to the City Council; as was the custom then, he remained on the Council until his death thirty- five years later. He served in the high office of Bailiff in 1558/9, but never became Mayor of the City. Like many other prosperous merchants and craftsmen, he took a full part in civic life, as Steward of Election Dinners, travelling to London on City business and supervising the grazing cattle on Port Meadow, the great public common that still stretches for two miles by the River Thames from Walton Well Road to Godstow. In 1586 he was on a subcommittee to spend £2 of public money on apparel for the three men who formed the City's draft for the army that year. The nature of Edge's original trade is not clear from the City records, which are not very full for the 1500s. He may have been a cloth-merchant or glover. But his second or subsidiary job is well documented: he was Keeper of Bocardo, the strange local name for the City Gaol. This was probably not a full-time occupation, but an extra source of income for a well-established tradesman. It may have been a long-established family business, for a Richard Edys, presumably our Richard's father or grandfather, was appointed "to enjoy the kepershippe of Bocardowe during life or good behaviour" in 1530. The Gaol was just at the end of St Michael Street, in the rooms over Northgate, which spanned the main street, Cornmarket, at St Michael's Church until demolition in 1772. In 1589, with the City's permission, Edge made a doorway right through the Wall from his parlor to a strip of land that he had just acquired beyond, outside the Wall but inside the Ditch. This strip, which he planned to use as a garden, is still recognisable today as the yard behind Nos 8-10. The doorway that he made in 1589 may be the opening in the Arcadia gift-shop, between the main shop and the store behind. Edge probably leased from the City a garden just inside the Wall as part of the amenities of the gaol and then built the three houses nearest Cornmarket (Nos.4-6) in the 1550s, as a home for himself with an annexe for privileged prisoners, such as other Freemen who had fallen into debt. Then, perhaps in the 1560s, he built the other two houses (Nos.8-10 or 8-16) as an investment for rent. He and his colleagues on the City Council, may have intended the whole property to be a permanent extra facility for the Gaol. But when he died in 1589, large debts came to light and the City allowed his widow to keep her home and the other houses. 1590s-1640s, THE SNOW FAMILY, lawyers and officials In 1600 an Oxford lawyer, John Snow, renewed the lease of the row of houses. It is not clear how he acquired them from Mrs Edge. He may have foreclosed on a mortgage, inherited the property or simply bought it. Snowe was an interesting figure, with his feet firmly placed in both University and City. He came up to Hart Hall (now Hertford College) from Somerset, graduated there and then became a fellow of Oriel College in 1575. In 1581 Snow had to resign his college post, when he married Alice, daughter of Thomas Flexney, another Oxford lawyer, son of a wealthy Oxford merchant and Registrar of the Bishop's Court. Presumably Snowe practised law in and around Oxford for the next nineteen years. Alice died in 1603 and was buried in St Michael's church, as was a daughter Jane in 1611. In 1610 Snow and a second wife had a son, Ralph who was baptised at St Michael's. That year too, Snow was elected Town Clerk, a post which he held until his death in 1613. City leases were generally for 21 or 40 years and were almost always renewed after about one third of the term. The arrangements for this particular property seem to have gone wrong and no leases can be found in the Lease-books between 1600 and 1647, when the City granted a new lease to Ralph Snowe, John's son, and Eleanor Link, widow (presumably a sister). By the next year they had sold the property. Ralph Snow, baptised in St Michael's church in 1613, had moved away from Oxford and become Auditor-general and "chief gentleman" to Archbishop Sheldon of Canterbury. In this capacity he gave rather grudging approval to the building-accounts for the Sheldonian Theatre, drawn up in 1664-9 by Dr John Fell, Dean of Christ Church. By then he had disposed of his father's Oxford property. In 1644, a few yards north of No 10, a devastating fire began in George Lane (at what is now 3-7 George Street) and raged southward until it had destroyed both sides of Butcher-row (now Queen Street) and reached down into St Ebbe's. This catastrophe does not seem to have affected No 10 and the other houses in the range, as the timbers are clearly earlier, but it must have been a very narrow escape. During the last year or two of his lease Snowe seems to have rented part or all of the property to Robert Bowne, lawyer and Deputy Recorder of Oxford from 1648 until his death, as a resident of Holywell, in 1653. THOMAS BOWELL, maltster and City Councillor, 1640s-80s Thomas Bowell, an Oxford maltster, renewed the lease of the property in 1648 and 1664. He may have been one of the large tribe of Bowells who were prosperous yeoman farmers and minor gentry at Chesterton and Wendlebury, just to the south of the market-town of Bicester and 9 or 10 miles north-east of Oxford. Bowell had at least one son, a younger Thomas, born about 1642 and may have been an established businessman in his thirties or forties when he appeared in Oxford in 1647. Bowell came to Oxford and set up in business in 1647, paying the large sum of £5 to become a Freeman. The size of this figure indicates that he was not an Oxford Freeman's son or apprentice. In a tax-list or Subsidy of (1648 (H.E. Salter, Surveys & Tokens (1920) p.175) Bowell was living just to the north of St Michael's church (on the site of Dillon's bookshop). He was elected to the City Council in 1652 and was shortly afterwards fined 4d for attending a Council meeting without his gown. Most councillors served for life, but Bowell had ceased to serve by 1656, having resigned or been found to be lukewarm in his sympathies towards the ruling Puritan clique. Through the 1650s and 1660s, as various tax-lists show, Bowell lived in a large house at about 8-10 St Michael Street; his malthouse was on a nearby plot on George Lane (now George Street), as a lease of 1714 shows (see below). From 1665 to 1685 a baker, Thomas Griffin, lived at Nos 2-6, no doubt renting this part of the property from him as home and bakehouse with shop. In the Hearth Tax returns of 1665 (Surveys & Tokens p.l89 and M.M.B. Weinstock, Hearth Tax Returns (1940) p.85) Bowell appears as occupant of a house with four fireplaces in St Michael Street. ln the very detailed Poll Tax list of 1667 (Surveys & Tokens p.283) the household comprised Thomas Bowell, maltster (worth £200), his wife and child, a kinswoman Ann Bagley and a servant-girl Elizabeth Allen, together with Salladine Litchfield, gentleman. This last, a lodger or kinsman, was Solladine Lichfield, one of the senior University administrators as Superior Bedell of Arts, who died a few years later and was buried in St Martin's Church at Carfax in 1671. Bowell himself must have died in about 1672-3, but St Michael's parish register does not record his burial. His widow lived on in the house until 1679. In 1680 a new proprietor, the mercer Mathew Pinnell, renewed the lease of the row of houses. He was born in about the early 1640s to one of the rather humble Pinnell families in the parishes of St Ebbe' s and St Aldate's in Oxford or perhaps in the north Oxfordshire market-town of Deddington. He was apprenticed to the Oxford mercer William Tumer who, like all mercers in any town, kept something like a small department-store specialising in cloth and became one of the more prosperous citizens. Pinnell became a Freeman in 1666. He did not immediately go into business on his own account but can be identified in the 1667 Poll Tax as the "Nathaniel (sic) Pinnell journyman" (wages £8) living directly west of St Martin's church at Carfax (in the present Crabtree & Evelyn) with his former master William Turner. Pinnell was elected to the Council in 1671 and served on it until his death 44 years later, as was normal in those days. He was elected as one of the two Chamberlains for 1673/4 and as one of the two Bailiffs (the second highest civic office) for 1675/6. He was chosen to be a keykeeper (or trustee for certain City moneys) in 1683, 1692 and 1702, to approve his fellow-councillors' dress for Charles Il's visit to Oxford in 1681 and to oversee the Parliamentary election of 1695. But in later life he never aspired to or reached the inner circle of power, He was never elected Mayor and, although he was the senior ordinary Councillor for his last 15 years, he never became one of the Assistants or Alderman, posts which regularly went by seniority in old age. Pinnell's ambitions may have been partly tied up in one of his sons, John born in 1680, who entered Balliol College in 1695, took his B.A. in 1698 and his M.A. in 1701 and became a Canon of Chichester Cathedral, holding two livings in Sussex. Such a career was common enough among Oxford tradesmens' sons. His connexion with St Michael Street was purely as an investor. He did not live there or in St Michael's parish at all but in a Magdalen College property, a large house at 135 High Street on which he was assessed for 16 windows in the 1696 Window Tax (M.G. Hobson, Oxford Council Acts 1666-1701 (1939) p.347). The lists of names in the parish Poor-rate Books indicate that Pinnell crammed as many tenants as he could into the St Michael Street houses. The lists have, as a fixed point at the east, the baker Thomas Griffin who had rented Nos 2-6 from Bowell, and, at the west, the trumpeter William Gerrard or Jarrett who leased the plot on which the present Northgate Hall stands from the City. The Poor-rate Books provide the names of seventeen of Pinnell's tenants at 8-10 St Michael Street between 1680 and1700: the "Peesly" who was there in 1684-6 must be the master-mason Bartholomew Peisley II who moved a few doors down the street in 1687 into part of No 20, and built the present grand facade of that house in about 1710; "Dewell" in 1683-7 must be the musician Thomas Dewell who also moved a few doors along in 1688 and lived for many years in part of No 22; "Hull" in 1687 may be the tailor George Howell who later shared No 22 with Dowell in the 1690s; "Terry" in 1683 may be the barber Francis Terrill whose children were baptised in St Michael's; "West" in 1689-91 may be the barber Robert West who had three children baptised in the church between 1687 and 1696. We can sometimes fill out the details of these families and their movements. Peisley's grandfather, a carpenter, had moved into Oxford from the Cotswold village of Ascott-under-Wychwood in about 1620. His father, a master-mason, lived all his life in St Giles' parish in Oxford and built the chapels of St Edmund Hall and Trinity College. Our Peisley built the great bridge at Blenheim Palace and his daughter married the Comptroller there, Henry Joynes of the Kings Works. His son, Bartholomew Peisley III also a master-mason, was concerned in all major Oxford building-contracts of the 1720s. His grandson became a Fellow of Trinity College and Rector of Alkerton in north Oxfordshire. Dewell the musician presumably worked at one of the two nearby Dancing-schools, one above Northgate and the other in what is now the Laura Ashley dress-shop; other musicians, such as the trumpeter Jarrett, lived close by and a thorough study would certainly reveal close links and relationships among this group. The tentative identification of two barbers among Pinnell's tenants suggests the presence of a barbershop in or close by No 10. In 1693-1700 "Gibbs" and "Dr Wynn", both unidentified, constantly recur together in the lists living at Nos 8-10 or 10-16; sometimes one is first and sometimes the other, which implies that they shared a house, one above the other or side by side, if there were two or more staircases in what had once been several smaller houses. When he was in his mid seventies, in 1714, Pinnell renewed his leases from the City of a "malthouse in George Lane now in the possession of Mr Dudley, the maltster, and the bakehouse and tenement in New Inn hall Lane now in the possession of Mr Tompkins, the baker, and others" (M.G. Hobson, Oxford Council Acts 1 701-1752 (1954), 85). Tompkins had taken over Nos 2-6 and the bakehouse from Griffin early in 1686. WILLIAM TOMPKINS, baker and family, 1710s-60s After Matthew Pinnell died in about 1715, his tenant at Nos 2-6, the baker William Tompkins, acquired the lease, which he renewed in 1728. Born in about 1664, he was apprenticed to Robert Withers, baker, became a Freeman in 1696 and was elected a Councillor in 1701. Between 1698 and 1727 Tompkins took on five apprentices, most of them yeomans' sons. This shows that he was in a fair way of business. By a first wife, Mary, who was born about 1654 and died in 1695, he had Elizabeth born in 1689, Mary born in 1691 and William who was born in 1692, became a maltster and died in 1719 (Wills Oxon 154/2/18). By a second wife, Dorothy, who was born about 1669 and died in 1738, he had Edward i born 1698 and died 1700, Eleanor born 1700 and married in 1720 to the University plumber Charles Cole in 1720, Edward ii born 1702, John born 1704 and George born in 1706. William Tompkins died in 1728 and was buried at St Michael's. Mrs Tompkins (the widow Dorothy) appears in the City rent-books in 1734. Presumably she took over the bakery when he died and handed it on to her son John. He appears in the rent-book in 1753 as Mr Tompkins and died in 1762; his brother George became a grocer, prospered and became a City Councillor until his death in 1751. THOMAS PARKER, baker and family, 17 60s- 1800s After John Tompkins the bakery passed to Thomas Parker, who must have been a nephew, son of one of his sisters, to judge from the name, Tomkins Parker, that Thomas gave to his son bom in 1765. Three years earlier he had married Mary, daughter of Ralph Bennett, an "Ale Draper [sic]" of the parish. In 1771 "Mr Parker" appears in the City rent-book. In 1772 a street-survey shows Parker as occupying a very long frontage of 104 feet; by then the other houses must have become stores for the bakery; part of the old range west of No 10 may have been taken down to make a garden. Thomas Parker died relatively young and, yet again, the bakery was run by a widow until her son came of age. "Mrs Parker, baker", that is Mary, appears in the rent-books in 1781 and 1799. Tomkins Parker, her son born in 1765 became a Freeman in 1794 (and could thus run an Oxford business). He had married a wife Anne and had a daughter Mary in 1791. Some tragedy, perhaps an epidemic, struck and Tomkins aged 36 and his nine-year-old Mary were buried on the same day in June 1801, leaving the two widows to run the bakery. The older Mary Parker died at 74 in 1806. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY By 1818 the property had been divided between William Tubb and John Allum, baker. This deal may provide a tentative date for the extensive reconstruction of No 10 that we noted above, until the full history of the property is known.