Oxford Ghost Signs: Dennis (decorator etc) at 46 Leckford Road
Phone 55769
SANITARY WORK
GENERAL HOUSE REPAIRS
G. H. DENNIS.
[DECORAT]OR PAPERHANGER
[PLUMBER]
& GLAZIER
George Henry Dennis was born on 3 March 1906.
At the time the 1939 Register was taken he was a master decorator living at 38 Thorncliffe Road, Summertown with his wife Rhoda and their baby son Wayland, as well as his apprentice,
Very soon afterwards he moved with his family to 46 Leckford Road.
He had this sign (which is now very faded) painted on the side of the house in 1945/46 when he returned from war service in the RAF. As he was a decorator, he may have done the work himself.
The photograph below (Historic England BB72/06670) shows the sign when it was still fairly new:
All four of George Dennis's sons (Wayland, Raymond, Christopher, and Richard) followed him into the business. The basement was used as their offices.
Bill Clinton arrived in Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1968, and in his first year he and three other American students lodged upstairs in this house with the Dennis family. Wayland Dennis later said that he was “a thoroughly nice bloke, a well-mannered, well-behaved young American gentleman”.
When George Dennis's lease of 46 Leckford Road expired, it went back to St John's College. The last commercial entry for Dennis at this address in Kelly's Directory was in 1970 and read: “Dennis & Sons (Decorators) Ltd, painters & decrtrs”.
Dennis died in Oxford in 1973.
Right: Advertisement for G. H. Dennis in Kelly's Directory for 1958
More about 46 Leckford Road
The house was built by Williams and owned by St John's College, and the first leaseholder in 1881 was the Oxford Building Company, a building society that had taken over the leases of a number of houses in north Oxford when purchasers could not be found for them in a depressed housing market. This was probably one of the houses that the company mortgaged in 1883 before it collapsed.
At the time of the 1881 census the occupant of the house was Robert Buckell, a coal merchant who was later to become an estate agent and serve six times as Mayor of Oxford.
By 1889 the house decorator Thomas Ward lived here, and he was still in the house in 1938. He ran the firm T. Ward & Son, builders, from the property.
As outlined above, the decorator George Dennis was here from late 1939 to 1970.
In 1974 the infamous drug dealer Howard Marks moved into this house with Rosie Lewis and her children while he was on bail.
- Daily Telegraph, 8 July 2000: “46 Leckford Road: was this where Bill Clinton famously 'didn't inhale'?”
- Oxford Times, 16 November 2001: “Former President Clinton 'digs' for sale”
- Radio Oxford archive: Interview with Wayland Dennis about the history of the house when Clinton became President of the United States
- Oxford Mail, 3 August 2016:“North Oxford home is fit for a president (and a notorious drug dealer)”