Laurel Farm Close, Headington

Laurel Farmhouse in 2023

Laurel Farm Close was designed by the City Architect J. K. Billingham and built by Oxford City Council in 1983–5 on the land attached to Laurel Farmhouse (20 St Andrew's Road).

Laurel Farmhouse is built of rubble with a tiled roof, and the Victoria County History states that the south wing is probably of sixteenth-century origin, but was altered in the eighteenth century. In this painting by Malchair dated 19 May 1773 (Ashmolean Museum, WA 1925.26), the two figures and the dog are standing on the site of the present Laurel Farm Close.

In about 1868 the butcher Isaac Solloway, who had ten stalls in Oxford's Covered Market, started to rent Laurel Farm, at first just as a butcher, and then also as a farmer there from 1882. He remained there until about 1888, and went bankrupt in 1890.

Isaac Solloway, occupier of Laurel Farm from 1868 to 1890

Isaac Solloway was born in Oxford in c.1829, the son of the butcher Thomas Solloway and his wife Maria, and was baptised at St Ebbe's Church on 21 January 1830. The family had moved to Bermondsey in London by the time of the 1841 census.

On 4 November 1855 at St Clement's Church, Oxford he married Mary Ann Dolphin, daughter of the maltster William Dolphin: they were both recorded as then living in St Clement's.

In December 1855, just after his marriage, Isaac started his own business in Abingdon, and in May 1857 he was summoned for obstructing the footway by exposing meat for sale outside his house there. Later that year he moved his business to 17 Paradise Square in Oxford, and the 1861 census shows Isaac and Mary living there with their first three children. He then moved on to Summertown, and on 11 July 1868 he advertised his house and butcher’s premises in South Parade for sale and moved to Headington. Their next child Isaac Dolphin Solloway was born in 1861 but died in 1863.

The 1871 census shows Isaac Solloway (40), a master butcher employing four men, living at Laurel Farm with his wife Mary Anne and their nine surviving children (Annie, William, Harriet, Frederick, Miriam, Thomas, Walter, Ernest, and Matilda, whose ages ranged from 15 down to seven months, with only the last two born in Headington). They had a 15-year-old servant girl. Their youngest child Rose was born in Headington not long after the census. Of their eleven children, only Matilda was baptised at St Andrew’s Church (n 4 September 1870).

Another child, Lilian Mary Coltman Solloway. born in the Thanet registration district in 1875, was later acknowledged to be Isaac's daughter and was presumably the child of his future second wife.

His first wife Mary Ann Solloway died in Headington at the age of 46 on 15 August 1877 “after twelve months' painful illness”.

At the time of the 1881 census Isaac Solloway was paying a visit to Alderminster in Worcestershire and his ten legitimate children were all at home at Laurel Farmhouse with their 21-year-old domestic servant.. His eldest son William Thomas Solloway (23) was described as a butcher and Annie Maria (24), Harriet Louisa (21), and Frederick Dolphin Solloway as butcher’s assistants.

Until 1882 Isaac Solloway had just been a butcher at Laurel Farm, but in that year he started to farm there as well. On 15 April 1883 he was summoned for a breach of an Order of the Privy Council for having 16 pigs affected with swine fever on his premises on 31 July and not reporting it. His employee Edward Morris said that the 16 pigs were kept in the orchard, and he was told to kill and bury seven of the ones that were ill. Solloway claimed never to have heard of swine fever, and was very ill with erysipelas at the time. The Magistrates fined Solloway £1 for each pig, and £2 1s. 6d. costs, a total of £18 1s. 6d.

On 11 August 1883 Jackson’s Oxford Journal reported that Isaac Solloway and a labourer called John Morris were summoned for assaulting the eccentric Revd Nathaniel Cotton in St Andrew's Road on 14 June. Cotton, who was then living in Headington, had threatened boys with a gun, and when he stood in the gateway to Laurel Farmhouse Solloway had tried to seize the gun from him. An “amicable arrangement” was reached. Meanwhile the Revd Cotton was also summoned for being drunk and disorderly in Headington on 29 July, when the Black Boy refused to serve him with any more drink, and was sent to prison for a month as he would not pay the fine.

On 4 August 1884 Isaac Solloway (51) married his second wife, the widow Sarah Matilda Coltman (39), the daughter of the hotel-keeper Richard Cannon, and they had two more children: Isaac Cannon Solloway (1886) and Flossie Violet Solloway, known as Violet (born 26 February 1890). They were baptised at Cowley St John Church on 23 November 1890 (even though they were then living in Southmoor Road) along with their older sister Lilian Mary Coltman Solloway, born in 1875.

Three of Isaac Solloway's children were married at St Andrew’s Church, Headington: Harriet in 1881, Albert in 1885, and Miriam in 1887.

On 16 April 1890 Isaac Solloway, butcher of Oxford Market and Old Headington, was adjudicated a bankrupt, around the same time that his second wife Sarah Matilda Holloway died at the age of 45 shortly after the birth of her youngest child Flossie Violet. He left Laurel Farm, and on census night 1891 he was living at 63 Southmoor Road, Oxford with his children Annie (24), Ernest (17) and Matilda (20), who were also described as butchers, plus a general servant. His baby daughter was boarding with the Warwick family at 100 Bullingdon Road, Oxford.

On 31 May 1890 Miss Solloway announced in Jackson's Oxford Journal that she had succeeded to the business lately carried on by her father, Isaac Solloway, for the past 30 years and would continue to supply best-quality meat at 93 & 94 The Market.

According to his great-great-granddaughter Clare Barclay, Solloway had been a great supporter of Gladstone’s campaign for home rule for Ireland, and family lore says that he placed ribbons on all of his beef delivery wagons. As a result, he lost his lucrative supply contracts with the University of Oxford, and this is why his business went under. He placed his three youngest children in a Catholic orphanage (the family, although of Irish descent, was Protestant), and he ended his days dying of tuberculosis in a poor house.

On 25 September 1886 the forthcoming auction of Laurel Farmhouse and its land was advertised in Jackson's Oxford Journal:

OLD HEADINGTON, NEAR OXFORD.
COPYHOLD OF INHERITANCE.
VALUABLE HOUSE PROPERTY AND LAND,
Well situated in the centre of the Village, about 1½ miles from Oxford; consisting of a substantial Roomy DWELLING HOUSE, Stone-built and Blue-slated, containing 2 Sitting Rooms, 5 Bed Rooms, Kitchen and Offices; Cellar in basement, Washhouse, Storehouse; YARD, with two-stalled Stable, a one-stalled Stable, and Harness Room, a three-stalled Stable, Fowl House, Piggeries, &c.; Small ORCHARD and BUILDINGS, formerly a Malthouse and Premises, but now used as a Slaughter House and Pens; together with the excellent Paddock of PASTURE LAND, entirely surrounded by good stone walls; the whole containing an area of upwards of 2 Acres, and now in the occupation of Mr. Isaac Solloway.

At the auction (held by Mallam's at the Golden Cross Hotel in Oxford on 20 October 1886), the house and farm were purchased by William Wootten-Wootten (originally Wootten-Undershell), who had owned Headington House since about 1848.

Ownership of Laurel Farm by the Wootten-Wootten family, 1886–1911

On 5 February 1887 William Henry Walsh, gentleman of Oxford, released William Wootten-Wootten from any claims he might have has mortgagee for a consideration of £200, and Wootten also paid £620 to the bank cashier William Haines in relation to the Deed of Covenant for Surrender and Release. Then on 1 April 1887 Wootten-Wootten paid the Peppercorns (Lords of the Manor of Headington) £92 10s. for a Deed of Enfranchisement for Laurel Farm (described as a tenement, malt-house, and close of pasture).

On 17 January 1887 William Wootten-Wootten, who was a banker, dropped dead at the age of 67 on arriving for a meeting at his bank in St Aldate’s.

It was probably Montague Wootten-Wootten, Wiliam's son and heir, who placed the following advertisement in Jackson’s Oxford Journal on 1 September 1888 when Solloway was going bankrupt:

HEADINGTON
TO LET, from Michaelmas next—An excellent HOUSE, Garden, and Grass Close, opposite the Church and adjoining the Vicarage, now in the occupation of Mr. Isaac Solloway, by whose permission the property may be viewed. Apply 119, St. Aldate-street, Oxford.

The 1891 census entry for Laurel Farmhouse reads: “Late Solloway: 1 uninhabited”

On 21 December 1892 the Oxfordshire Weekly News reported that a monster hog fed by Mr M. Wootten (their son Montague, who lived at White/Sandy Lodge) of Laurel Farm, Headington attracted considerable attention and was said to weigh live 37 stone 16 pounds.

It was probably around this time that the Wootten Woottens, who kept their herd of Jersey cows on their land to the north of Cuckoo Lane, put their cowman into Laurel Farm. At the time of the 1901 census the cowman Joseph Ayres is listed at Laurel Farm with his wife Ruth, who was described as a dairywoman, plus their two children and Ruth's widowed mother Elizabeth Masters.

When Mrs Sarah Wootten died at the age of 82 on 24 June 1904, Headington House became vacant and Laurel Farm ceased to be occupied by the owner's cowman.

On 3 June 1909 Montague William Wootten-Wootten shot himself in the garden of his home (White/Sandy Lodge) and his widow and two sons left Headington.

On 20 July 1911 his executors put Laurel Farmhouse up for sale, along with Headington House, White/Sandy Lodge, and Lower Farm (all freehold). The sale catalogue is held in the Oxfordshire History Centre and two images can be seen online via PictureOxon:

Lot 4 was described as follows:

Compact freehold property known as Laurel Farm Headington consisting of a stone built and slated residence situated in Church Street Containing: Dining Room, Drawing room, Kitchen, Dairy, five bedrooms and WC. Small garden Brick and stone built and tiled cow house for 10 cows, calf box,meal house, cart bay, 2 fowlhouses, 6 pigsties and stockyard. Timber built and slated stabling for 3 horses and an enclosed Pasture land and orchard. The whole extending to about 2a. 0r. 0p. In the occupation of Mrs Newhall with lots 2, 3 and 5 (White Lodge Meadow to Sandy Lane, Lower Farm dairy Holding) on a five years lease from 29th September 1909 at an entire rent of £400 a year. Apportioned Rent £50 per annum. Land tax 15/5. No tithe. (Lot 2 adjoining).

Ownership of Laurel Farm by Corpus Christi College, Oxford

On 29 September 1911 Aubrey Francis Wootten-Wootten, barrister, conveyed Laurel Farm to Corpus Christi College, Oxford for a consideration of £900. At the same auction the solicitor Albert Henry Franklin bought Headington House and its land up to the London Road, and it is possible that the same arrangement as before, whereby the dairyman of Headington House lived at Laurel Farm, continued.

In 1915 and 1916 Walter James Wheeler, whose widowed mother was the farmer at Barton Farm, was listed as the farmer at Laurel Farm. He had moved on to Mather's Farm by 1918, possibly because Franklin was by then planning to sell all the farmland of Headington House for the building of Stephen Road and the adjacent northern ends of Osler Road and Old High Street, and would no longer need a cowman.

Laurel Farmhouse was then leased to Mrs Jessie Elizabeth Jones, who ran a nursery garden on the land attached to it. On 5 March 1921 at Ss Philip & James Church in Oxford she married her second husband Aubrey Charles Tagg, and by 1928 they were living in the farmhouse. Aubrey Tagg was listed as a poultry farmer in Kelly's Directory for 1939. The map below shows Laurel Farmhouse and its orchard in that year:

Laurel Farm: map of 1939

The Taggs were both listed at the farmhouse in the 1939 Register, but Aubrey Tagg died soon afterwards in October 1939. Mrs Jessie Elizabeth Tagg remained in this house until her death on 21 January 1969 at the age of 93. (Until her death on 26 June 1948 at the age of 92, a Miss Elizabeth Boby also lived here with Mrs Tagg: she was probably her aunt, as Boby was Jessie's maiden name.)

Mrs Dakin of 27 St Andrew's Road kept some goats in the Laurel Farm orchard after the Second World War, and was often seen walking them down Dunstan Road.

On 15 July 1975 Corpus Christi College conveyed of part of Laurel Farm including the orchard to Oxford City Council for housing, but held on to the farmhouse itself as accommodation for one of its Fellows until at least 1980. It is now a private house.

The present estate

Laurel Farm Close under construction Photograph courtesy of the Friends of Old Headington

Twenty-three council houses (including three bungalows), designed by the City Architect’s Office/David Williams, were built here in 1984. Planning applications were approved as follows:

February 1975: Outline permission for residential development to erect 17 no dwelling houses, 17 no garages, 3 no letable garages and 11 no parking spaces (74/01251/A_H)
November 1983: Land adjoining Laurel Farm St Andrews Road: Listed Building consent for “demolition of unlisted buildings (garages and pigsty) and section of boundary wall. Demolition of garages, a pigsty, and a section of boundary wall” (83/00564/L)
December 1983 “20 houses with on plot parking, 3 elderly persons bungalows, block of 4 garages for rental to local residents, 3 elderly persons’ bungalows and associated site works” (83/00565/GFH)
June 1984: Land adjoining Laurel Farm St Andrews Road (boundary adjoining 19–20 Laurel Farm Close): Listed building consent to create opening in wall for pedestrian access from new housing development (84/00102/L)
October 1985: Continuation of existing stone wall to complete boundary between Laurel Farm Close and single family dwelling (62 Osler Road) (85/00707/NFH)

Headington history: Streets