The Bridge Hotel

  • Wheatley Bridge Hotel and tea gardens 1920s
  • Wheatley Bridge Hotel and tea gardens 1920s
  • Wheatley Bridge Hotel and tea gardens 1920s
  • Wheatley Bridge Hotel and tea gardens 
Postcard front, probably from the 1910s
  • Wheatley Bridge Hotel and tea gardens Postcard back, probably from the 1910s (postage for a postcard was 1/2d, until 1918)
  • Wheatley Bridge Hotel and tea gardens 1920s
  • Wheatley Bridge Hotel and tea gardens 1920s
  • Wheatley Bridge Hotel and tea gardens Postcard 1920s
  • Wheatley Bridge Hotel and tea gardens Postcard 1920s
  • Wooden hut at Wheatley Bridge Hotel and tea gardens
  • Wheatley Bridge Hotel and tea gardens Postcard 1920s
  • Bridge Hotel walk to top tennis court
  • View of front- circa 1920s. From Kieran Saunders family archive.
  • View of front- circa 1920s. From Kieran Saunders family archive.
  • Advertisement when Ernest Pollard was the proprietor so possibly 1920
  • Current photo of a bay window perhaps of one of the two original toll/turnpike cottages
  • Current photo of a bay window perhaps of the other (road facing with 1729 date above) of the two original toll/turnpike cottages
  • Press report 17 February 1926 re license refusal
  • Press report 14 January 1927 noting that the bankrupt person had no proposal to make
  • Press report 21 January 1927 stating that Mrs Foster had debts of £4,837 bot only assets of £1,741
  • Press report 21 January 1927 noting that Mrs foster had started the business in 1921
  • Press report 21 January 1927 noting that Mrs Foster had started the business in 1921 with £200 cash
  • Press report 21 January 1927 noting that Mrs Foster had bought the hotel for £4,500 but only put down £870
  • Press report 21 January 1927 noting that the filling station had cost £1,000
  • An advertisement for the Bridge Hotel from the Oxford Mail in February 1955
  • Press report 11 January 1929 with details of the normal flooding and (spurious) value of the property in 1927 @ £7500
  • Lot 8, Wheatley Bridge House in the 1913 Hotlton Estate Sale. Did not sell
  • 1937 map showing that the Bridge Hotel was still not in Wheatley. It came into Wheatley (shaded light green) in the parish boundary reorganisation of 1954 when the boundary moved to the north side of the London Road
  • Bridge Hotel in 1979
  • Bridge Hotel in 1979
  • Bankruptcy Notice 10 December 1926
  • Accident caused by Mr Pollard's car in 1910
Archive Notes:

The Bridge Hotel. Photos from a 1920s brochure. Postcard, front and back, probably from the 1920s with a list of amenities on the reverse. Currently Harvester Restaurant (2018)

Various press reports

In an advertisement in the Oxford Times in 1955, the Bridge Hotel states that the building dates back to 1729, but this refers only to the cottage or cottages built that year to collect tolls on the Turnpike. It certainly occupies a strategic site by the bridge and a building appears there on early maps.

The absence of this building to be enumerated in Wheatley in either 1911 or 1921 was noted. Instead, it is found in the Chilworth division of Great Milton in 1911 with Ernest Pollard, a farmer, living here at Wheatley Bridge House, formerly Brooks Cottage, and next door to Turnpike Cottage. In 1921, it is found in the Chilworth division of Lewknor, with Rossen Caldwell, housekeeper, living here at Wheatley Bridge House with three visitors. This property was enumerated after Sworford Farm. So, it is clear that its conversion to an hotel had not yet taken place.

Article about The Bridge Hotel (now The Harvester), including its time as Wheatley Bridge House, and information on its entries in the censuses of 1911 and 1921 (and non-appearance in the Wheatley 1910 Revaluation map).

Image of the particulars of Wheatley Bridge House included in the 1913 sale by the Holton Park estate, although it failed to sell. It was let to Ernest Pollard (the occupier per the 1911 census where the record is shown under Chilworth) at £42 p.a. with 13.5 acres of land. There is only one house referred to, so unclear where Turnpike/Toll Cottage fitted into this.

According to her great-great grandson, Fanny Cordelia Mutton was a Hotel Manageress of a few different hotels including the Bridge Hotel, Wheatley in 1926. She had married Joseph Henry Pleming in 1899; at some point they separated (he remarried in 1911) and Fanny took up with an Arthur John Foster and they seemed to go as man & wife for some years although there is no record. In February 1926, they made an application for a liquour licence but this was refused. Fanny was the proprietress who filed for bankruptcy of the Bridge Hotel at the end of 1926. The (separate) write-up on bankruptcy and the claim against the council suggests that Fanny Foster (as she called herself) had no business experience, had over-paid for the property (taking account of the mortgages on it) and was under-capitalised, In desperation, the creditors made a claim against Oxfordshire Council (see separate report), but it was regarded as laughable.

Also, according to the same informant, his grandmother's aunt & uncle, Lily & Walter Balding, lived in a wooden hut on the river at Wheatley, shown in one of the photos.

At some time it became a night club just called 'The Bridge', the name later changed to 'Fingles', Drinkers from the King & Queen would go on to this. G R Nixey owned this at some stage and, reportedly sold the land on which the supermarket was developed.

An advertisement for the Bridge Hotel from the Oxford Mail in February 1955

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