Witney Street (north): Nos 23-25

In the 19th century this long range comprised two pairs of cottages. Probably it was the two tenements ‘under one Raunge’ given to the endowment of Burford grammar school in 1571, which in turn were among three adjoining tenements left by John Pinnock the elder to his three daughters in 1486. If so, leases show that No. 23 was subdivided in the late 17th century, and No. 25 at a later date. The existing façades exhibit a confusion of former windows and doorways, with different types of stone. The gabled dormers with sliding sashes are identical in both properties, however, reflecting their common ownership into the 19th century.

Seventeenth- and 18th-century lessees included a currier, apothecary, and fuller (No. 23), and a rough mason, day labourer, and widow (No. 25). From the 1840s the four cottages were occupied by agricultural labourers, a groom, tailors, blacksmiths, and a butcher. No. 25 was in single ownership by 1910, and No. 23 by the 1920s, the probable date of its ground-floor windows. The triangular-headed doorways at No. 23 (one now a window) seem out of place: that to the left is possibly reset, and the other probably dates from when the cottage was re-united. The front was once lime-washed, and small patches remained visible in 2007.

See: RH Gretton, The Burford Records (1920), 323–4, 327–30, 332, 346, 553, 563–4;  Some Oxfordshire Wills (Oxon. Record Society), 39