Oxford History: The High

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No. 83 is probably the only bus drivers’ rest room in the country to sport pilaster strips with quasi-Ionic capitals and the god Bacchus peeping over the top, dating from the time when this was part of the Angel Inn.

It is a Grade II listed building (List Entry No. 1320571). It was in St Peter-in-the East parish until that parish was united with St Cross parish in 1957. The sites of 83 and 84 High Street have been owned by University College since the early fourteenth century.

The building dates from the eighteenth century, and at the time of the 1772 Survey of Oxford was recorded as occupied by two people: Mr Taylor (with a frontage of 4 yds 1 ft 3 in.) and Mr Bayliss (with a frontage of 2 yds 1 ft 3 in.).

No. 83 was greatly altered later in the eighteenth century, when it became part of the Angel Inn. It is shown below in the 1820a as the second building from the right below in the 1820s. It no longer had a front entrance, as it would be approached internally from the main part of the inn and not from the street.

In 1841 accommodation of the the Angel Inn still ran across the top three floors of No. 83, but the ground floor was let out to shopkeepers.

At the time of the 1841 census the bookbinder George Shrimpton lived here with his wife Emma and baby son

The 1851 census shows the cabinet maker, upholsterer, & paper hanger Robert Fletcher (49) living on his shop premises here with his wife Eliza and their three children. He died on 1 January 1852 at the age of 50.

By 1853 Mrs Swadling had opened a shop here for ladies, and in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 29 April 1854 she announced to the ladies of Oxford that her shop had “a select assortment of millinery, baby linen, ladies' boots and shoes, &c”, plus “dress-making as usual”, but her shop only survived about a year.

In 1855 Samuel Young Griffith had put the declining Angel Inn up for sale, and while no buyer came forward for the main building, the grocer Francis Thomas Cooper paid £2,350 for the residue of a forty-year lease on Nos. 83 and 84, and for an annual rent of £120 had the former coffee room at No. 84 for his shop and living accommodation, while letting out this shop at No. 83.

Henry Hine rented No. 83 from Francis Thomas Cooper for his tailor’s shop, and the 1861 and 1871 censuses shows him living on the premises with his family.

Francis Thomas Cooper died in 1862 when his son Frank Cooper (born 1844) was aged 17. On reaching the age of 21 in 1865 Frank inherited his pair of shops, and in the same year the Angel Hotel closed down. He immediately expanded the family business at No. 83 into this shop as well, and he 1871 census shows Frank (26), as yet unmarried and described as a grocer & wine merchant, living on the premises of Nos. 83 & 84 with his brother Arthur (21), his aunt Mrs Ann Hill, who was his assistant, and his cousins Harriet Stone and Maria Morris, plus two servants. The following year he married Sarah Jane Gill, who in 1874 started to make her famous Oxford Marmalade here (commemorated by a blue plaque).

The following advertisement for Frank and Arthur Cooper's grocer's shop here at 83 and at 84 next door appeared in Jackson's Oxford Journal a number of times, starting on 16 October 1875:

Here the Cooper brothers boast that they were purveyors to the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII, who had come up to Christ Church in 1859), the Crown Prince of Denmark (the future Frederick VIII, who had come to study political science in Oxford in 1863) , and Prince Hassan of Egypt (who had come up to Christ Church in 1869 and lived at Walton House until 1872). None the less at the time of the 1881 census Frank Cooper (36) did not describe himself as a grocer, but as an Italian warehouse manager employing four men and 14 boys: he was then living here over his shop at No. 83 with his wife Sarah Jane and their four sons aged 6, 4, 2, and 1, plus an assistant grocer, a housemaid, and two nurses. By the time of the 1891 census Frank Cooper and his family plus three servants were living over both Nos. 83 & 84, and he now described himself as a “Grocer (Italian Warehouseman)”.

The photograph below (Historic England HT00111) shows Frank Cooper's shop at Nos. 83 & 84 at a date after 1882:

Frank Cooper's Oxford Marmalade still survives today, though it is no longer a family firm or based in Oxford: it is made by Rank Hovis McDougall, which is now part of the Premier Foods Group.

By the time of the 1901 census Frank & Sarah Cooper were still living over Nos. 83 & 84 with their son William (26), who was now the shop manager, and three house servants

The 1911 census shows Harry Jones (51), an unmarried man who ran a boarding house, occupying the 23 rooms over 83 & 84 High Street with the help of two servants. Only one boarder appears to have been in residence on census night.

The 1921 census shows William Filer (52) as the boarding-house keeper here, assisted by his son. There were seven boarders in residence on census night.

The Frank Cooper retail grocery shop remained on the ground floor Nos. 83 and 84 High Street until 1919, when it was sold to Twining Brothers, who remained here until about 1939. It then became a Co-op shop/café.

Photograph of No. 83 in 1949 when it was a café

From about 1950 to 1976 the whole building was an annexe of University College.

In 1976 the Oxford Bus Company (then the City of Oxford Motor Services) moved here from its former home just two doors away at No. 85.

The upper floors of Nos. 83–85 are now a single unit, and it is possible for members of University College to walk through the seven properties at Nos. 83 to. 89 High Street and then over the bridge into the Radcliffe quadrangle.