High Street (east): No. 25

This smart façade hides an earlier house, owned in 1685 by Richard Bartholomew. The earliest datable feature is a rebuilt 16th-century stair turret to the rear, and a steeply pitched 17th-century roof can be seen through the quatrefoil openings in the sides of the parapet. In 1729 William Bartholomew of Turkdean (Glos.), gent, sold it to his lessee Thomas Smallbones, a victualler. Smallbones probably remodelled it, since the façade is typical of Burford in the 1730s. The ground-floor window pair on the right shows one typical response to the window tax, since it counted as a single window. The blocked attic window may also reflect the tax, but was more likely included to complete the unity of the symmetrical façade. The flat door hood conceals remains of an earlier pedimented one.

In 1778 Richard Smallbones sold the house to the carpenter John Arkell (d.1807), whose daughter leased it. In 1820 it was probably occupied by William Brookes, gent, and in the 1840s by a lady of independent income, Ann Osman. Later occupiers included a tailor and tanner, the Baptist minister William Piggott (1880s), and the doctor Frederick Lane (1890s). The shop window may have lit the tailor’s workroom, and also served a 1930s shop. The name Warwick House is modern.

See: RH Gretton, Burford Records (1920) 454, 457