High Street (west): No. 70

The squared and dressed stonework visible above the projecting 19th-century shopfront, laid in regular courses, is probably late 17th-century. The first-floor windows are 18th-century, but probably not original, since they are somewhat clumsily set into the wall. The alleyway to the left led to the rear of the plot, a common feature of Burford houses, and under the shop window are openings to a cellar. In the 1840s–50s this was James Allen's grocery shop (combined, by 1851, with a boot and shoe warehouse), and from the 1860s it was a draper's, run from the 1880s by the Bowermans. The slogan 'Established 1870', on glass over the doorway, refers probably to the Bowerman family business, which must have started elsewhere. By 1920 Gilbert Bowerman was an antique dealer, and in the later 20th century this was a tea room. In 2007 it was part of the Oxford Shirt Co.