Millennium Project
By Jon Malings
Foreword
This ongoing study contains hypotheses and speculation as well as “fact”. Information on births, deaths and marriages is drawn from the Deddington Parish Register unless otherwise stated. Spellings are as they appear in the original documents.
I’ve attempted to convert sums of money into today’s equivalent. I'm not sure this is entirely satisfactory as there are multiple ways of doing so. My preferred option is to use the ratio between average earnings “then” and “now” but, like most simple approaches, this has some problems. For example, the price of any specific item (say "the average house" or, better still, a computer) does not have a constant relationship to "average earnings" over time. More information on making historical financial comparisons can be found on the website www.measuringworth.com
I have used their conversion tool to offer a guide to the equivalent cost today [ ] whenever a sum of money is shown.
Introduction
The owners of Winmour Cottage have the Deeds to their property going back to 1649. Based on these, the 10-yearly censuses of 1841 to 1911 and various other sources, we can piece together some of the history of this cottage over the past 360 years. Its owners, occupiers and neighbours make a roll-call of old Deddington families. - Sturch, Hopcraft, Rose, Bennett, Churchill, Dean, Malins and Knibbs to name but a few.The cottage, which was given the name “Winmour” sometime around 1960, is about two thirds of the way down on the east (left hand) side of Philcote Street. This side of the street consists of a single terrace made of the local Cotswold stone. Many originally had thatched roofs, a situation which continued into the 20th Century. Winmour finally had the thatch removed in 1945 and was only connected to mains water in 1938. Before that water was obtained from a shared pump to the rear of the adjoining Calder Cottage.
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Most of the Philcote Street cottages were built, separately, in the 17th/18th centuries. The terrace is shown on the 1808 Deddington Enclosure map, minus 3 or 4 later additions at the lower end of the street. Winmour Cottage is number 138 in the 1808 map key.
Several of the cottages, including Winmour, were once two (or more) adjoining tenements that have now been converted into single houses. For much of the 18th and 19th centuries many of these cottages were "buy-to-let" properties and Winmour was no exception. It was certainly rented out in 1698 and 1725 with the expectation that it would provide an income for the then owners. During the period 1774 – 1926 the cottage, or parts of it, was only occupied by the owner for 45 of the 152 years but the title of the two Winmour tenements was never separated, they remained under single ownership throughout.
As luck would have it I have part of the probate copy of the Will of Robert Franklin of Deddington, Carpenter, which shows how some houses in multi-occupation worked. There is no date, but Robert Franklin was buried on August 12th 1825, aged 73. Unfortunately, we do not know which house was his.
Robert left to his wife Isabel Franklin:
“the exclusive use of such parts of the Dwelling House wherein I now reside…as consists of the Dwelling Room or House and Parlour and the two sleeping rooms over the same And also use of the Kitchen and the further cellar [and] other parts of my dwelling house jointly with the occupier of the other parts thereof and also the exclusive use of the upper part of the garden now in my occupation being the Northward side thereof from the Gate.”
For a summary of the history of Winmour Cottage from 1649 click HERE
For a detailed description of it's history, the owners and occupiers click HERE
For a list of the Deeds click HERE