High Street (east): No. 1 (Wisdom Cottages)

In 1571 the Burford merchant Simon Wisdom granted a small cottage here to trustees for Burford Grammar school, rebuilding it as 3 cottages in 1576. The dormer gables and mullion windows are from this period, and a blocked window and former roof-line in the west (end) gable show how it was altered and increased in height. The school owned it until 1862 and let it to tenants, including successive members of the Silvester family (c.1628–after 1717).  Paul Silvester converted it into a single house in 1693, and probably built the east wing for his tannery business. In the 1840s and 1850s it was a currier’s house, yard and shop let to Edward Ansell, and after the Second World War became a doctor’s surgery. In 2007 it was a private house. The ground-floor sash windows are late 18th- or 19th-century insertions.

See RH Gretton, Burford Records (1920) 328, 331-2, 346, 458, 518-19, 553; M Laithwaite,'Buildings of Burford', in A Everitt (ed), Perspectives in English Urban History (1973) 114