High Street (east), No. 123 (House of Simon)

This remarkable run of late medieval buildings continues with No. 123, a double-jettied building whose late medieval timber frame is exposed at first-floor level. The close studding was meant to be seen. It had two timber mullion-windows, and the jowled posts suggest that it may also have had twin gables. In the 16th century this was yet another of Simon Wisdom's houses (see above), and he was responsible for its remodelling. A cruder timber structure was inserted to build out the first floor (the earlier building-line is visible inside the shop), but would have been plastered over. The stone archway, with Wisdom's initials and mark and the date 1582, completed the rebuilding; chamfered beams possibly from that phase can be seen in the passageway. No other details are known before the 19th century, when it was occupied by the bank agent William Ward (1830s?–60s), a saddler and farmer (1860s–70s), a plasterer (1880s), and a slater and decorator (1890s–1920s). In 2007 it was a women's clothing shop called House of Simon.

See: A Jewell, Burford in Old Photographs (1985), 80, 112