The area now known as North Oxford was developed between 1850 and 1910, with Polstead Road being built from about 1880. It formed a major extension of Oxford. Why did it occur? Kay Symons has investigated one of the commonly held beliefs.
Author: Kay Symons
Houses specifically mentioned: numbers 2, 5, 8, 21, 27, 29, 31
Table of Contents
Introduction
The story is often told that Polstead Road and the surrounding streets were built to house married dons after the university reforms from 1877 abolished the rule of celibacy for the majority of college members. [Also see here.]
As part of the Polstead Road Street History Project, I now have all the census data from 1891 to 1921. And they tell a rather different story. Perhaps the most striking thing is that at each 10-year snapshot between 45 and 50% of the heads of households were women, mostly wealthy widows or families of spinsters living on their own means.
Women owning houses.
By 1911, Mrs Elizabeth Hitchcock, a 78-year-old widow, was running no 21 as a boarding house, and by 1921, her niece, Sarah Gibbs, previously a private governess, had taken it over. The only other female head of house apparently earning her own keep was unmarried Mary Warland at number 31, who in 1921 was a 65-year-old teacher of pianoforte at the Oxford High School for Girls and privately, and who appears to be keeping her 90-year-old stepmother, Rebecca, and her 69-year-old sister, Elizabeth, on the proceeds.
The household at no 27 in 1921 looks lively: the head of household, Constance Jenkinson, was a 47-year-old widow from Co Cork and a university student in anthropology, just one year after women were allowed to matriculate for the first time at Oxford. She lived with her 78-year-old mother and a boarder, Rosalind Moss, who was also a student, in Egyptology, and visiting when the census was taken was another student, Eleanor Rowntree, studying modern languages. Next door at no 29, lodging with Frances Macnamara, a widow, were two more students, Annis Clark, studying maths and Harriet Hudson (French).
The figure below shows the distribution of household heads by gender from 1891 to 1921.
Living on own means.
In 1891, when the road was still only half-built (9-19 and 14-22 were still vacant building plots), 10 of the 18 householders (56%) were living on their own means, including all 8 female householders. By 1921, this had reduced as a percentage, but not dramatically – 13 of the 30 householders (43%).
Big Victorian families?
We also tend to think these houses must have been built for big families of children and lots of servants. Again, the data doesn’t bear this out. In 1911, when the census asked how many children a couple had ever had, there was one who had had 10 children and two who had had 6 each, but the remainder had 1, 2, 3, or none.
The number of children – and servants – in the street decreased over this period, partly because some families stayed here as their children grew into adults, moved away, and they themselves were widowed. By 1921, more families were taking in boarders, and more households comprised several generations of adults, but household size also decreased. In 1891, households averaged just over 6, and by 1921, just under 4. The number of residents under 18 dropped from 1.7 to 0.4, and servants from 1.7 to 0.6.
The histogram below illustrates the changes in household residents over 30 years.
Businessmen, clergy, professionals, military.
At the beginning, when tradition tells us the houses were for married dons, only three of the households in Polstead Road were headed by University men – Arthur Thompson at no 5 was a lecturer in human anatomy; William Glasson at no 2 was St John’s college bursar, and William Benham at no 8 was assistant to a professor of natural history. Other heads of household were a tailor, a glass and china merchant, a hop merchant and a tax inspector.
By 1921, there was an auctioneer, a hospital storekeeper, a printer and stationer, a motor engineer, a retired outfitter, two army quartermasters, two builders, a retired doctor, a commercial traveller, a retired carriage builder and just two academics – one professor and one fellow and tutor. At the St Margaret’s Institute, the live-in caretaker was also a grocer’s warehouseman.
The figure below illustrates how the occupation of the head of each household changed over 30 years.
Conclusion - not for married dons.
So, the development may have been initiated by the new rules at the university, but in Polstead Road at least, it was initially mostly people living on their own means, supplemented subsequently by people from a wide range of middle-class occupations.
This is all just a preliminary analysis, so do let me know if you have further questions I can answer, or if you would like access to the data to interrogate yourself.
Kay Symons (no. 10)
