List entry for 6 St Andrew's Lane: 1100600

Now known as Pumpkin Cottage, this house dates from the seventeenth century. It was held under the Manor of Heddington, and is described in the early Court Rolls as “a messuage or tenement, yard, orchard, garden ground, backside and buildings”.

John Clements conveyed the copyhold of this cottage to George Smith, carpenter, in 1758, when it was described as being “late in the occupation of Widow Bolt”. Smith died in 1766, and the next year it was inherited by his daughter Mrs Martha Pancutt and her husband Richard. At this time it was occupied by John Snow.

Richard Pancutt died in 1803 and Pumpkin Cottage was inherited by his son, another Richard, who passed it on to his half sister, Mrs Martha Bateman and her husband Robert, a carpenter. They lived in the house an had nine children baptised at St Andrew’s church between 1803 and 1818. They were both still living in St Andrew’s Lane (then called Church Lane) at the time of the 1841 census; and Robert Bateman was still there in 1851, a widower of 72 living with his 8-year-old granddaughter Eliza. The Headington Rent-Book of 1850 shows the house as both owned and occupied by Robert Bateman: its rateable value was then £6–10-0, and its gross estimated rental £9-0-0.

In 1852 Robert Bateman sold the house for £160 to John Bateman, a grocer of Oxford who may have been his first cousin. John lived in the house for only five years, as he died in 1857, and it was then let out to William Jeffs.

It was then inherited by John Thomas Bedford aka Bateman, the only surviving child of Sarah Bedford deceased.

In 1897 it was enfranchised for £4 by J. T. B. Bateman of 33 Ashbourne Grove, East Dulwich: it had been rented since 1890 by Walter Metcalfe, a young gardener’s labourer, at a rent of five shillings a week. The 1891 census shows Metcalfe, a bachelor of 21, living in Pumpkin Cottage with his blind father, his charwoman mother, and two child boarders.

The 1911 census shows William Louch (59), a carpenter, living at Pumpkin Cottage with his wife Ellen (57), who was a laundress working from home, and their son Jesse (24) who was a house painter, and Harold (21), a general labourer. Jesse Louch died in the first world war. The 1921 census shows William Louch (70), now described as a retired carpenter, living at 6 St Andrew's Lane with his wife Emma (66), who was still working as a laundress and their son Harold (32), who had no employment, and their boarder. William Louch died here at the age of 75 in February 1926, and his widow Ellen Louch continued to live here until her death at the age of 80 in January 1935. The photograph below shows her outside Pumpkin Cottage:

Ellen Louch had had a hard life: she was baptised at St Andrew’s Church on 7 June 1854, the illegitimate daughter of Anne Gardiner. On 6 June 1876 she married the labourer Thomas Soanes at St Andrew’s Church, and their son William was baptised there four months later. Just four months after his birth, Ellen’s first husband committed suicide in the garden of his New High Street house. Ellen then married a young widower, the carpenter William Louch, at St Andrew’s Church on 27 December 1879, and had another eight children. At the time of the 1891 census the Louches were living in New High Street , and in 1901 at Stafford Terrace in Old Headington. Mrs Louch made ends meet by taking in washing. She was still listed here (as Mrs Helen Louch) in Kelly's Directory for 1935, but she died at the age of 80 at the beginning of that year.

From 1936 to 1945 the house was occupied by Miss Mabel A. B. Bateman, a retired housekeeper born in 1866, and the 1939 Register shows her living here with a lodger.

The house appears to have been unoccupied in 1947.

By 1948 it was known as Pumpkin Cottage, and it was occupied in that year by Patrick Henry Coates, a retired Royal Artillery captain, and his wife Mary. He died here on 27 April 1949.

In 1952 the occupant was given as Peter James Spicer.

In 1954 and 1956 Miss Catherine M. Gilbert was listed as the occupant, and during this period Church Lane was given the new name of St Andrew's Lane.

Gertrude Lilian Aldous lived here from at least 1958. She died in Malta on 11 February 1974. Her sisterAgnes Mary Aldous continued to live here and died at the age of 94 on 22 July 1982.