Witney Street (south): No. 14 (former Masons Arms)

Like No. 12 (Bull Cottage), No. 14 is documented from the 1390s. In the late 15th century it was one of several properties owned by the prominent Pinnock family, who left it to the vicar and churchwardens in return for an annual mass for the souls of John Pinnock the elder (died 1473) and his wife.  A 14th-century Decorated chimneystack survived on its west gable until the 19th century (see No. 12), and the through-passage plan and off-centre doorway also hint at an early building. Any early remains are well hidden behind an 18th-century remodelling, however: the ashlar façade and parapet date from c.1730, while the window pattern and cornice are of a similar period. The person responsible for the remodelling is not known, though members of the Jordan family owned it for part of the 17th century, and the occupier in the 1660s was probably a sieve-maker. Before 1707 it was divided among three separate tenants. In the 1840s it became the Mason's Arms pub, run by a succession of licensees and acquired, before 1910, by Clinch's Brewery of Witney. For a time it was not as clean as it might have been and was known locally as ‘Sooty’s’, the landlord’s wife being referred to as ‘Sweep’. In 2007 it was an inn and restaurant renamed the Angel Brasserie.

(Photo by Richard Shaw, Oxfordshire Buildings Record)

See: N Pevsner, Buildings of England: Oxfordshire (1974),  520; M Laithwaite, 'The Buildings of Burford', in A Everitt (ed), Perspectives in English Urban History (1973),  77; Listed Building Description; RH Gretton, The Burford Records (1920), 319, 333, 338–9, 342–3, 353, 355, 358–9, 366, 421, 455, 447, 671; R Moody, The Inns of Burford (2007), 99–100