113-117 High Street

  • College Farm, south-west facade
  • College Farm, south-east view
  • Old Chequers (113-115 High Street) and College Farm (117 High Street)
  • College Farm, south-west facade
  • College Farm, south-east view
  • The stream
  • The stream
  • Looking towards College Farm
  • 2018. The old Chequers, 113-115 High Street
  • 1980. College Farm
  • College Farm 2019
  • Details of purchase of adjacent cottage in 1904
  • Known (?1950s) as Bossoms Cottage
Archive Notes:

Photos of College Farm with parts of the Old Chequers and Photos showing the stream emerging from the culvert in front of College Farm in 1998 & looking along stream towards the High Street, and one photo taken in 2018.

113 High Street and 115 High Street. This was the Chequers Inn which was trading as such in 1630 or, maybe, earlier. In the 1920s, 113 High Street had become a grocery and sweet shop. From 1926, it was run as a shop by Mrs Sally Keen (nee Gomm) selling groceries and sweets. By 1939, it was a shop run by Robert Green (Bob Green), then in the late 1950s the Bowen family until c. 1961. The memories of their daughter, Leslie Bowen, of her school days in the Bell Lane School and of Miss Wren and Miss Flood are found in record 536. Later Mary Blake and Percy Blake acquired it for development purposes at least 1965 (see record 1799). Chequers Cottage, adjacent to the Chequers Inn, was part of the Chequers property and was owned by Morrells. Edward Dover lived here and was followed by Dora Pope who later kept the draper’s shop in Ivydale, 47 High Street, see record 1250. By the end of the 1960s, both were houses and the Gomm family lived in one of these.

College Farm. This is marked on a map of 1593 but appears to have been rebuilt in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, believed to have been in 1768. Thomas James Robbins, son of James Robbins, was living here in 1891, 1901 and 1911 and it was in the attic here that James Robbins’ notebooks were found. Later it was the home of William Tombs, one of the pioneers of Local Government in Wheatley.

College Farm farmhouse was owned by All Souls College from 1593 or earlier - the reference in the High Street booklet that this was bought in 1904 is incorrect. The 1904 acquisition was only of the adjacent cottage, shown green on the composite image, within the write-up, based on the 1910 map and All Souls own records.

 

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