No. 8: Vacant
No. 8 is the left-hand half of a large building dating from around 1800. It is jointly Grade II listed with No. 7 next door (List Entry No. 1185307), and is owned by Oxford City Council. It is in St Michael-at-the-Northgate parish.
At the time of the 1772 Survey of Oxford Nos. 7 & 8 were occupied by a Mr Clement, and their combined frontage measured 11yd 2ft 6in.
The area behind Nos. 8, 9, and 10 was a market garden from at least 1830 to 1846, managed by the nurseryman T. Fairbairn.
At the time of the 1851 census No. 8 Broad Street was unoccupied.
The 1861 census shows George Brooke, a solicitor's managing clerk, living over both Nos. 8 & 9 Broad Street with his wife and three children.
By 1866 the premises were occupied by the solicitor John Naylor Clayton. At the time of the 1871 census he was living over his office, but he appears to have let one of the floors to the basket maker Frederick Castle and his wife and four children. Castell died in 1877.
A forthcoming auction of this shop was advertised thus in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 28 September 1878:
All those valuable PREMISES, situate and being No. 8, Broad-street, containing front and back kitchen, pantry, wine and coal cellars, lumber room, and w.c. in the basement; a private entrance, an excellent shop or office (with handsome plate-glass front), and sitting room, on the ground floor; drawing room, bed room, and w.c. on the one-pair floor; and sitting room and two bed rooms on the two upper stories; with yard at the back, the whole in the occupation of J. N. Clayton, Esq., solicitor.
This Lot is held by Lease under the City of Oxford for a term of 40 years, from Michaelmas, 1865, subject to an annual rent of 18s., Capon money 1s., and acquittance 8d.
In June 1879 George James Neill moved here when his shop at 48 Cornmarket was due to be demolished and rebuilt. The 1881 census shows him (described as a cutler employing two boys) living upstairs here at No. 8 with his wife and daughter. He died in Summertown at the age of 56 in August 1888. This photograph (Historic England HT00122) shows his shop in the centre of the group:
Mark John Lindsey (founder of the firm Lindsey & Sons) purchased the business almost immediately from Neill's executors and opened the first branch of his firm outside London here at 8 Broad Street on 20 September 1888, and the name survived here for a hundred years. Mark Lindsey’s sons Jack and Charles continued the business, then their sons Ken and Rex, and finally Rex’s son John. Ken Lindsey retired in the late 1950s and the Oxford branch was acquired by the Isis Instrument Company (although it retained the name of Lindsey & Sons until the late 1970s). The advertisement below is taken from Kelly’s Directory of 1908.
There was no one living over the shop at No. 8 Broad Street at the time of the 1891, 1901, and 1911 censuses.
Blackwell’s Children’s Bookshop, which started at No. 22 in 1950 and moved to No. 6 in 1974, ended up here at No. 8 from 1986 to 2002.
|
Occupants of 8 Broad Street listed in directories |
|
1852, 1861 |
Charles Thomas Hawkins, Accountant |
1866–1878 |
John Naylor Clayton, Solicitor |
1879–1887 |
George J. Neill |
1889–1976 |
Lindsey & Sons |
1980 |
Isis Instrument Co. (inc. Lindsey & Co.) |
1986–2002 |
Blackwell’s Children’s Bookshop |
2003–2020 |
Bravissimo |
2020– |
Vacant |
When the solicitors moved out in the late 1870s, other people rented the upstairs as follows:
- 1880: Professor Monier Williams, Treasurer and Secretary of the Indian Institute
- 1882–1895: Virgin & Bennett, surgeon dentists
- 1896–1906: Bennett & Knight, surgeon dentists
- 1901–1906:Virgin & Bennett, surgeon dentists
- 1907–1932: Bennett & Stroud, surgeon dentists
- 1934–1939: Alfred Charles Bennett, surgeon dentist
- 1940–1962: Ellmas Duplicator Co Ltd
- 1964–1976: Isis Instrument Co. Ltd. (which had taken over Lindsey & Co. in the late 1950s.