10 St Andrew’s Road
List entry for 10 St Andrew's Road: 1369426
No. 10 St Andrew’s Road, next door to the White Hart pub, is the first in a row of four houses dating from around 1700. It is built of coursed rubble and has a roof of red tiles.
St Andrew’s Road is labelled “Highe Streete” on the 1605 map of Headington, and probably remained the main shopping street of Headington village until the London Road was cut through the fields near the end of the eighteenth century, making the present Old High Street more important.
The engraving on the right by G. Hollis shows the house in 1813, when it had three dormer windows (of which only one survives).
Digby Latimer, who became Lord of the Manor of Heddington in 1845 after the death of his father, Edward Latimer of Headington House, moved to this house in 1844 when he got married. The Headington Rate Book for 1850 shows that he rented the house from John Tew (the farmer and publican who also owned the White Hart) and that it had a rateable value of £13–10-0 and a gross estimated rental of £18. The 1851 census lists Digby Latimer, a barrister not in actual practice aged 43, living here with his wife Harriet and her sister and aunt, plus two visitors and two servants. He was a Churchwarden at St Andrew’s from 1850 to 1864, when he and his wife moved into Unity House in St Andrew’s Lane with his elder sister Mary.
John Tew died at the age of 82 in 1869, and in 1872 his widow put 10 St Andrew's Road, which was then occupied by James Patrick Clarke, up for sale. The following advertisement appeared in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 20 June 1872:
A FAMILY RESIDENCE, Coach House, Stable, and Garden,
And a MESSUAGE or TENEMENT & Premises adjoining,
all situate in the centre of the VILLAGE OF HEADINGTON,
to be sold by auction, By Messrs. R. PIKE and SON,
At the Cape of Good Hope Inn, St. Clement's, Oxford, on Tuesday July 6, 1875, at Six for Seven o'clock precisely, by direction of the Executrix of the late Mr Tew….
All that substantially-built PRIVATE RESIDENCE, situate immediately opposite the Church, in the centre of the Village of Headington, in the occupation of Mr. Clarke, containing entrance hall, library, and dining room, kitchen, scullery, and larder, on the ground floor; drawing room and three bed rooms on the first floor, and two attics over the same; garden, coach-house, and stable, with back entrance thereto, containing five large rooms, kitchen, cellar, coalshed, and henhouse, yard, and garden; also a small flower garden in front, enclosed with iron palisades, occupied by Mrs. Bullock, and as the Village Reading Room. The whole producing an aggregate rental of £35 per annum.
This Property is Copyhold of Inheritance of the Manor of Headington. Quit Rent, 1s. 2d.
At the time of the 1881 census 10 St Andrew’s Road (then called Church Road) was still occupied by Clarke, who was a Clerk in the Royal Engineers Department, and his wife Mary Anne (both aged 68), and one servant. Ten years later, the 1891 census shows that their unmarried daughter, Miss M. E. B. Clarke, then aged aged 50, had come to live with them. By 1896 Mr and Mrs Clarke were both dead, but their daughter remained in the house and in 1897, as Digby Latimer half a century before, became Churchwarden of St Andrew’s.
The 1911 census shows Miss M. E. B. Clarke (70) living alone in the house with two servants. After her death in 1926, the house was occupied by Maurice Pontin until at least 1930.
Miss M. I. Moor lived here from 1933 to 1954.
The name St Andrew's Road was given to Church Street in 1955.
Dr & Mrs Eric Peet lived here from 1956 to 1958, and Mrs Dupuis from at least 1960 to 1976.
