Oxford History: The High

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The present four shops at Nos. 13–16 High Street were built in 1773–4 by John Gwynn to form the frontage to the new covered market and were known as “New Parade” until about 1812. Nos. 13, 14, and 15 are jointly Grade II listed (List Entry No. 1369376, wrongly numbered as 12–15) and are owned by All Souls College. No. 16 on the right is separately Grade II listed and is owned by Lincoln College (List Entry No. 1047270). The four shops forming the original market front were in the parish of All Saints until that church closed in 1971. They are now in the parish of St Michael-at-the-Northgate Church.

Before the Market expanded westwards in 1838, there was the main central entrance between Nos. 14 & 15 (shown above) and an entrance each side: West Avenue to the left of No. 13, and East Avenue to the right of No. 16.

The Jones family, 1775–1815

The first occupant of the newly-built No. 15 was the goldsmith William Jones, who announced in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 30 December 1775 that he had moved from elsewhere in the High to this new shop on the corner of Western Avenue (which became Market Avenue 2, above, after the market was extended):

WILLIAM JONES, Working Gold and Silver-Smith, Jeweller, &c.
BEGS Leave to acquaint his Friends and the Publick, That he this Day opens his New SHOP, the corner of the Western Avenue in the Front of the Market, upon the New Parade, in the High-street, Oxford; where he has laid in a large Assortment of the newest fashioned Goods of all Kinds, which will be sold upon the most reasonable Terms.
   N.B. Gold, Silver, and Metal Watches, by the best Makers; Watch-Chains, Seals, &c. and Trinkets for Ladies Watches; Silver, Plated, and Dutch Tea-Urns; with great Choice of useful and ornamental Articles of divers Kinds.

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The sisters of William Jones: in another shop on the New Parade

Meanwhile his four spinster sisters, Anne, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Jane, who had continued to run the fishmonger's business that had been started by their father Thomas Jones (d.1747) and mother Elizabeth (d.1773) on the other side of the High, also moved to one of the four shops in front of the market, as announced in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 7 January 1775:

JONES'S, Fishmongers, in OXFORD,
BEG Leave to inform their Friends and the Publick that they are removed from their late Shop to the Front of the New Market in the High-Street, where they humbly request a Continuance of the Favours they have so long experienced; and which from Duty as well as Inclination thus most gratefully acknowledge. They also take this Opportunity of assuring the Nobility and Gentry, that it will be their constant Care to have the earliest Supply, according to the Season, in the various Articles of the Fishmongery; and that all Orders will be attended to with the utmost Punctuality.
N.B. Places are taken for the POST-COACH, as usual, which sets out for London every Morning at Eight o'Clock.

Jackson’s Oxford Journal on 2 October 1784 advertised the forthcoming auction at No. 15 of all the household furniture, linen, and china of the silversmith William Jones.

Four of his daughters carried on the family business, and on 7 November 1788 it was reported:

Died, after a short illness Mrs [sic] Anne Jones, eldest daughter of the late Mrs Elizabeth Jones of Oxford, fishmonger, by whom in partnership with three sisters the business has been carried on, and is intended to be continued by the survivors.

A fifth sister, Mary Jones (1741–1815) worked for William Jackson, the founder and proprietor of Jackson’s Oxford Journal, and inherited most of his estate. Mary left this shop to her niece Elizabeth Latimer and her husband Edward. He lived at Headington House and was a wine merchant at No. 11 High Street during the first half of the nineteenth century.

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On 29 March 1778 the jeweller & goldsmith Thomas Turner announced that he had opened his Birmingham, Sheffield, Glass and Staffordshire Warehouse in the New Parade, and No. 15 seems the most likely of the four shops.

Turner went bankrupt in 1792 and Richard Madge, the stepson and partner of the goldsmith & jeweller George Tonge, purchased Turner's house and stock in trade, and continued the business in his shop in New Parade under the name of G. Tonge, Richard Madge, and Co. (Hitherto Madge had been a tea dealer & grocer in another shop in the New Parade, to which Mrs Mary Jones (the widow of the goldsmith William Jones) succeeded in 1792. )

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From the 1840s

The draper J. Rainsford announced in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 28 March 1835 that he had declined his business in favour of Messrs. Morley & Co., and they announced in a notice immediately below that they had opened a drapery, mercery, & haberdashery in his premises at 15 High Street. (It is possible No. 16 is meant, as that is the address they give on 26 March 1836; but they could have moved next door in that year.)

When the owner of this shop, Edward Latimer, died in 1845, he bequeathed its rental to his daughter Jane Latimer, with instructions that the shop should be sold after her death. (She died in 1872.)

On 20 January 1849 Levi Greatbatch announced in Jackson’s Oxford Journal that he had moved his glass & china warehouse here from 59 Cornmarket Street.  At the time of the 1851 census he was living upstairs with his wife Mary Ann and their five children, plus two general servants and two lodgers (undergraduate brothers at Trinity College). (Arthur Mitchell Greatbatch, who was to take over the business after his father’s death in 1903, was not yet born.) By 1861 Greatbatch was living at Diamond Street Villa in Summertown, and by 1871 he was at the Cedars in Park Town, and the upstairs at 15 High Street presumably became part of the shop, as no one lived there at the time of the 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, and 1911 censuses.

Greatbatch's shop remained at No. 15 until the mid-1920s, when it became part of Webber's.

No. 15 has been owned by All Souls College since 2020/1.