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Hotspot 15. The Gentlemen's Houses

The favoured place for Victorian development lay north of Tree Lane where, after inclosure, plots could be taken on long leases that made building worth while. Most land in Iffley belonged to the Donnington Hospital (see 16) which was anxious, after about 1840, for tenants who would build valuable property.

P) The Priory was built c1840, in fashionable Gothic including battlements. From 1859-63 it housed a community of Ursuline nuns who had a small school, but its main tenant was Alfred Kent, a retired merchant. Alfred Wickson, one of the residents of Stone Cottages (see 14) worked for the Kents as gardener and coachman and inherited £1,000 when Mrs Kent died in 1900. He bought property in Cowley and never looked back.

The right-hand Priory gate post has a cross cut into the stone near its base; it does not look like a professional carving, as might have been done for the Ursulines. Edward Cordrey, in "Bygone Days in Iffley", says it commemorates a passer-by thrown from his horse and killed. "It was also the custom to cut out crosses in the turf, where anyone had lost or taken their life. This I have seen in Meadow Lane, when it was all grass, and a man had been found shot dead."


The Priory, front

The Priory, back
E, H) Hawkwell House Hotel is misleadingly named. First there was the field called Hawkwell; then at inclosure it was divided into plots; then John Parsons, the Oxford banker, built a house on one of them, and called it Hawkwell backing onto Tree Lane. He never lived there but had a summer home at 'The Cottage', Tree Lane. Then another grand house was built on the plot between Parsons' land and Church Way; that was called The Elms; the Strong family lived in it and, later, the Allens; the last Iffley Allen died in 1970 and the house became The Elms Hotel, the purchasers also acquiring Hawkwell which they used as an annexe. The hotel changed hands, has been greatly enlarged over Hawkwell grounds and has taken the Hawkwell name. Hawkwell does not deserve to be elbowed out, being a fine house from the early 19th century, with a Grecian-style portico; it was the centre of Parsons' country estate where he farmed and where he shot pheasant; it has a surviving game store beside the house, for hanging the birds. The Elms was a more conventional and less elegant house, but surrounded by fine gardens and having a commanding presence above Church Way.

The Elms Hotel
The Elms, now Hawkwell House Hotel,
facing Church Way

Elms Hotel Back
Hawkwell, now also Hawkwell House Hotel,
backing onto Tree Lane, behind The Elms

 

D) Denton House, W) Wootten and B) Beechwood all date from the earliest period of "gentrification" in Iffley, the 1790s. Businessmen doing well in Oxford liked the rising ground above Iffley Turn – healthy and pleasant, conveniently placed for the Turnpike into the city and offering plots large enough for impressive houses. They took long leases from Donnington, the landowners (see 16).

Denton House
has spent most of its life in institutional use. It was altered, enlarged and uglified until its form was completely disguised. Recent development removed all the rubbish in an attempt to rescue the original house. What stands now is perhaps similar to what was built, but it has been converted into flats and closely surrounded by small houses. Denton was built for the Lock family, Oxford goldsmiths and pillars of city life, but before long it had become a boys' preparatory school run by the Revd Mr Slatter. Charles Reade the novelist went there in 1822, when he was eight, and suffered Slatter's discipline for five years.



Denton House, front and back

Beechwood was built in 1798, a beautiful house with colour-washed plaster, two-storey bays flanking the entrance and short, symmetrical wings east and west. It now belongs to All Souls. John Sparrow, warden of the college 1952-77, retired to it.

Beechwood House
Wootten stands next to Beechwood; it is also beautiful, L-shaped with two storeys. Richard Wootten was Mayor of Oxford in 1815 and 1834, and his money came from banking. The house has a remarkable extent of surviving ground although it has lost some to development in Wootten Drive (1978).


Wootton House

Its later neighbour Wood House (WH) has disappeared under Woodhouse Way and Baytree Close.

See diagram showing land development in Modern Times in History.