Harberton House

Harberton House (shown above in The Building News of 22 May 1908) was one of the first houses built in Harberton Mead, and the road was named after it in 1944. The accompany text reads:

HARBERTON HOUSE, HEADINGTON, OXON.
This is the residence of Mr. H. L. Eales, and the architect is Mr. Herbert Quinton, of Oxford. The plan shows the accommodation provided. The walls are of red brick, with timbered overhanging gables, the roofs being tiled. A feature of the house is the combination of the hall and drawing room with a divisional screen.

The owner, Major Charles Herberton Harberton Eales, evidently named the house after a family name. In 1928 Barna Brow was built on part of its site after Eales gave some of its land to his daughter.

Harberton House was destroyed by fire in 1972, and Rolfe Place was built on the site.

In 1909 there were just three large houses in what is now known as Harberton Mead. To the west was Harberton House, occupied by Mrs Eales, and to the east were St Catherine’s (occupied by Arthur Wallace Pickard-Cambridge, Fellow of Balliol College) and Winshields, occupied by Francis John Haverfield, Camden Professor of Ancient History.

Most of the development of Harberton Mead took place in the period between the publication of the 1921 and 1939 Ordnance Survey maps that are shown below.

1921

1939

Note that in Kelly's Directory for 1930 (the first directory to include this area in the City of Oxford), the houses in Harberton Mead are treated as being on the west side of Pullen's Lane.

The following houses had been built by 1935:

In 1942 the Air Ministry Code and Cipher School (part of the Oxford Clerk and Dispatch School) was at Harberton House in Harberton Mead.

The western part of Harberton Mead leading down to the Marston Road was originally known as Harberton Road.

The road’s old house names and modern numbering system are as follows: