Lower Farm, 8 Dunstan Road
List entry for Lower Farm: 1047297
Lower Farm is at 8 Dunstan Road. The land occupied by the farm was awarded to Mary Jones of Headington House under the Headington Enclosure Award of 1804 (Plots 72, 73, and 74). She left the land to Edward & Elizabeth Latimer in 1815, and Edward in turn appears to have left it to his eldest daughter, Miss Mary Latimer (1800–1891) in 1845. It then came into the hands of William Wootten-Undershell (later William Wootten-Wootten), the man who had bought Headington House in 1848.
Lower Farmhouse has been said to date from around 1800, but there is no evidence from any census of a substantial building in this area, apart from Manor Farm just across the road. It appears from Edward Latimer’s will that Lower Farm was probably known as Phillips Farm until the 1840s, and that from then until c.1860 its land was rented out to John Tew (a farmer of 140 acres as well as a victualler) who lived at the White Hart. It seems likely that the present house was built in the second half of the nineteenth century, absorbing an earlier building.
Miss Isabella Watson-Taylor, the owner of Headington Manor House and Manor Farm, ordered the sale of crops here in 1888, implying that Lower Farm was now connected with Manor Farm, in the following advertisement in Jackson’s Oxford Journal on 11 August 1888:
From 1906 Lower Farm was rented out to another butcher, Harry Edward Berry, who had a shop in Old High Street and was a son of the well-known family of bakers in St Andrew’s Road. He and his wife Alice Jane had had two children, Alice Jane Berry and John Henry Berry at Ingleside in Old Headington, and their third child William Richard Berry was born at Lower Farm on 25 August 1909.
The 1911 census shows Harry (36), described as a “Family butcher & farmer”, living here with his wife Alice (35) and their three children. Their fourth child Muriel Elizabeth Berry was born at Lower Farm on 1 February 1915.
The owner of Lower Farm, Montague Wootten-Wootten, had shot himself in the garden of his home at White/Sandy Lodge on 3 June 1909, and his executors proposed to put all his property up for sale, including this farm, at an auction on 12 June 1911, The sale catalogue is held in the Oxfordshire History Centre and two images can be seen online via PictureOxon:
- Photograph of Lower Farm in the 1911 auction catalogue
- Plan in the catalogue showing Lower Farm (Lots 5 & 6)
It appears that the sale did not take place, as on 18 May 1912 the Evening Standard and St James's Gazette advertised another auction by direction of Montague Wootten-Wootten's executors to be held at the Golden Cross Hotel on 5 June 1912 of all his Headington property, including Lower Farm which was described thus:
LOWER FARM, HEADINGTON. Good house; stabling and buildings, and 50 acres of land (partly copyhold).
Joseph Stowe of West Lodge (6 Dunstan Road) bought the farm in 1912, and continued to rent it out to Harry Edward Berry. The 1921 census shows Berry (46), described as a butcher & grazier, living here with his wife Alice and their four children.
Joseph Stowe died in 1926, and in July that year after twenty years of renting Lower Farm Harry Edward Berry bought it at an auction held at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford, together with its 65 acres of land which stretched across the present northern bypass towards Elsfield. At the time of the 1939 Register Berry (born 1875) described himself as a master butcher and grazier, and was living here with his wife Alice and a schoolgirl, plus their servant.
In 1951/2 some of the farm’s land was compulsorily purchased from Berry to build the Northway Estate.
Harry Edward Berry died in 1955 and was buried in Headington Cemetery on 31 March. His widow Mrs Alice Berry continued living at Lower Farm until her own death in 1961. Then from 1962 to 1976 John Henry Berry, their eldest son, is listed in directories as the occupant.
Below: Lower Farm in c.2000, before renovation
