Witney Street (north): No. 21

Most of the present house is late 17th-century, built probably by the chandler Thomas Parsons who owned and lived in it in 1708. The mouldings of the doorway and fragments of ovolo-moulded mullions visible at the ground-floor window are from that phase. Some thick internal walls may, however, be the remnants of a medieval house, and the line of an earlier steeply pitched roof can be seen in the west gable. Later owners included the slater John Green, whose family probably lived here from 1769 to 1831, and the glover and gaiter-maker Augustus Evans (here 1851–79), followed by an excise officer (1881) and a retired police inspector (1901). The present large ground-floor window is probably 19th-century; the sills of its 'Yorkshire' or sliding sashes are moulded, and may have been reset. A cottage at the rear almost certainly existed by 1708, when the site accommodated 3 households.

[Private correspondence summarising deeds from 1708]