Grand Tour

   (History of each of
   the hundred houses
   of Holywell Street)

Holywell Bowling Green

Holywell Cemetery

Holywell Church 

Holywell Cock Pit

Holywell Cottage

Holywell Gallows

Holywell Manor

Holywell Mill

Holywell School

The Holy Well

Window tax

Listed buildings

House numbering

1830 directory

1839–1847 directories

1667 poll tax

Pubs

Timeline

2 Holywell Street dates from the early seventeenth century, but was partly remodelled in the eighteenth century. It comprises a single-storey building on the left and a three-storey one on the right, each with a basement. It is owned by Merton College.

It is a Grade II Listed Building (1186750), with the following description:

No 2 SP 5106 NE 6/223 12.1.54. II GV 2.
House. RCHM 219. Originally early C17, Partly re-modelled in C18. 3-storeyed timber-framing on an ashlar base with cellars, the windows of which are above the street level. These are modern brick stacks and a Welsh slate roof. On the south elevation is an overhang at the first and second floors. On the ground floor are two projecting and splayed stone bay windows with modern stone four-light moulded mullioned frames with sashes. The front door is in a plain moulded stone frame and there are five stone steps up to it. Over the doorway, the overhang of the first floor (which is roughcast) is supported on two modern wooden scrolled brackets, on the face of each of which is a shield, that on the west bearing three chevrons (? for Merton College), that on the east being blank; there are similar but ancient brackets (with blank shields) at the east and west ends of the house at this level. The two windows of the first floor each project on three wooden scrolled and enriched consoles on which are blank wooden shields; each window has two C18 sashes to the front and 1 small sash on each return. The second floor has five sash windows (the two outside having double sashes) and the whole of this floor is boxed-out and roughcast and is a C18 (? late C17) addition or remodelling. To the west is a single-storeyed stuccoed block on cellars with an attic dormer in a modern red tile roof; in the ground floor is a three-light stone-framed sash window, the whole being in a shallow recess with a segmental head.
   Interior. RCHM p. 182a. Includes a C18 fireplace and some C18 panelling.
For a drawing the exterior made in 1822 by J C Buckler, see Bodl MS Don a.3 II, 31.

Mrs Wise was the occupant here by 1771. This report from Jackson’s Oxford Journal explains how the railings beside her front steps were stolen on 21 October that year:

Whereas on Monday the 21st of this instant October 1771, the iron rails to the steps of Mrs. Wise’s house in Holywell were taken away. This is to give notice that if any one will discover the offender or offenders so that they may be brought to justice, shall, on his or their conviction receive half a guinea reward from Francis Kibblewhite in Holywell. [Mr Kibblewhite lived at No. 39.]

The builder John Matthew lived here in the 1840s and 1850s.

John Hudson, Esq (described as also being of Shotover Place) then lived here for a short period until his death at the age of 67 on 16 January 1869. This house was then put up for auction, and was advertised thus in Jackson’s Oxford Journal on 27 February 1869:

All that commodious and substantial-built DWELLING HOUSE, containing entrance hall, dining room, and breakfast room, together with a large room used as an office on the ground floor; drawing room, bed room, dressing room, and w.c. on the first floor, and four bed rooms over the same; a large kitchen, pantry, scullery, wine, beer, and coal cellars in the basement, with garden and conservatory at the back; also a BUILDING adjoining, containing two large rooms, called the laundry, with passage entrance from the street, to which it has a considerable frontage, and might be easily converted into a separate Dwelling House.
This Property is held by Lease under Merton College, Oxford, for a term of 40 years, from the 5th of April, 1864, subject to the following Out-goings: — Quit rent, 5s.; 8 pecks of Malt; and Land Tax, £2 1s. 6d.

No. 2 Holywell Street was named as Sinclair House in directories between 1872 and 1887 and also on the 1876 OS map Street Plan of Oxford.

The grocer George Gardner lived here at Sinclair House from at least the spring of 1871 to February 1879.

By the time of the 1881 census the Misses Kate & Frances Proud and Miss Mary Tredwell ran a boarding school here called Sinclair House.

On 10 December 1881 the lease of this house as a family residence was advertised in Jackson’s Oxford Journal:

The house failed to sell at the auction, and on 24 December 1881 the auctioneers advertised that they were prepared to sell it privately for £850.

In 1884 the remainder of the new lease (twenty years) was advertised for sale.

From 1905 to the 1980s there was a medical practice here. Dr Isabella Margaret Little, who had formerly been at 5 Holywell Street, moved her practice here in the late 1920s and remained until the early 1960s. The house now has an Oxfordshire blue plaque (right) commemorating her.

• Oxfordshire Blue Plaques
  More information on Dr Isabelle Little

This house has been a Merton College annexe since the early 1990s.