Blanchford Builders Merchants occupied a large site between two villas at 59 and 61 Windmill Road from 1958 until it closed on 14 February 2025. Before that date the site was A. E. Vallis’s timber yard.

No. 59 Windmill Road (above) was built by 1898, and was a grocer’s shop until 1960. Blanchford’s, as Vallis’s before them, had originally been based at No. 61 to the south, and it was only in the 1960s that this older house at No. 59 became part of the yard. The front had a large plate-glass window added in the 1980s (above), which was removed when the house was restored to a dwelling in 2017.

No. 61 Windmill Road (above) was the house at which A. E. Vallis timber merchants were based, and which Blanchford’s took over in about 1967.

Arthur Vallis had an extra house (59A, above) built between 59 and 61 Windmill Road in about 1929 for the family of his son Ewart Vallis; this is shown on the 1939 map of Headington, but was demolished in 1988 to make the Blanchford’s entrance wider.

Arthur Edward Vallis

Arthur Vallis is first listed as a builder in Kelly’s Directory for 1906 (under Quarry, as the west side of Windmill Road was in that ecclesiastical parish). He was at 61 Windmill Road by 1911. In 1927 the business changed from builders to timber merchants.

The 1911 census shows Arthur Edward Vallis (45), a builder born in Headington Quarry, living at 61 Windmill Road with his wife Sarah Ann (52), who was born in Launton. They had been married for 23 years, and the four of their six children who were still alive still lived with them, namely Alice Mary (22), Felix George (19), who was a bricklayer, and Laura Ada (14) and William Ewart (12), who were still at school.

Advertisement on front cover of Kelly’s Directory for 1935

In 1958 Vallis’s sold their business to Blanchford’s.

Above: The Vallis family (left to right): Felix George, William Ewart, Arthur, Sarah, Alice, Laura. Photograph taken in 1939 to celebrate Arthur and Sarah’s Golden Wedding, in the rear garden of Sandfield House (site of Horwood Close). This was the home of Arthur & Sarah Vallis after they moved from 61 Windmill Road

The Blanchford story

Blanchford & Co. Ltd (builders' merchants & ironmongers) was founded by three brothers (Fred, Cecil, and Ronald Blanchford) in 1938, and they opened as builder's merchants and ironmongers at 35 Queen Street, which had formerly been occupied by Kingerlee, with their warehouses at Shoe Lane and at 29 & 30 New Street, St Ebbe's. They sold items such as box-shaped Belfast sinks made in thick lime clay, cast-iron baths, fireplace surrounds, and tortoise stoves.

Right: Advertisment for Blanchford's
in Kelly's Directory for 1940

By the mid-1950s the Blanchford brothers retired and sold their business to two employees and a third party, whose families remain the owners today. The new owners soon acquired A. E. Vallis’s premises in Windmill Road, as well as a site in Princes Risborough. The Headington site expanded, and in about 1960 Blanchford’s sold their Queen Street premises to Grimbly Hughes.

• Photograph of Blanchford's shop at 59 Windmill Road in 1961

In 2004 Blanchford’s created a new sales office from an existing warehouse space, and the existing kitchen & bathroom showroom was modernized.

The headquarters of Blanchford was at Windmill Road, but they also had a branch in Princes Risborough and then expanded to Bicester, and then to Wallingford in 2012.

Blanchford Building Supplies closed down on 14 February 2025 with debts to over 260 creditors of more than £3.3 million.