High Street (west): Nos 118-122 (former Red Lion)

The early-to-mid 19th-century ashlar façade of this tall 3-storey building hides elements of a medieval house, including two 15th-century fireplaces (both in their original positions) in the private house above the shop. Owners included Henry Cutler in the early 15th century, in the late 15th John Pinnock the younger, of a prominent merchant family, and by 1580 a chandler, Robert Brewton. The modern-day doorways reflect the 15th-century arrangement. That on the right leads to a passageway through to the rear of the plot, so that the present shop-door would have been characteristically off-centre to the medieval house.

Between the 1770s and 1860s this was the Red Lion Inn, and the façade dates from that period. From the 1880s to 1910s it was Frederick Drinkwater's butchers, the faint outline of his painted sign still visible between the second-floor windows. From the 1930s to 1970s it was Barclays Bank, and in 2007 a bookshop. Rubblestone outbuildings at the back, related to the inn and butcher's, were bought in 1938 for conversion to cottages. The architect also remodelled the façade and recreated the passageway and door to the right, replacing the former butcher's shop window.

(Photo by Jessica Brod, Oxfordshire Buildings Record)

See: RH Gretton, The Burford Records (1920) 333, 335, 338, 421, 425; R Moody, Inns of Burford (2007 edn) 62