Millennium Project
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Article in Deddington News December 2025
Deddington History website clearly has a ‘Heineken effect’; it reaches browsers even in the Antipodes. David Castle (a Falklands resident) recently contacted me to say that he and his brother Steve (resident in Australia) are related to Nathaniel Castle (b.c1800) who became Mayor of Oxford.
Nathaniel was one of six children of Richard Castle (1765-1820) of Over Norton and Elizabeth Hollier of Deddington (1756-1837). Richard was a Gamekeeper and Maltster. He had property in Church Street (now The Old Malthouse) and “four newly built and convenient cottages or tenements, with out-buildings, yards, and garden ground, situate in Philcock-street” (now Ivings House) as reported in Jacksons Oxford Journal on 10 December 1814 announcing their upcoming sale.
Nathaniel was apprenticed to an Oxford hatter, Jeremiah Randall, in 1811 aged 11. His indenture lasted to 1825.
He married Mary Green of Oxford on 30 May 1830. They did not have any children.
The 1841 census shows Nathaniel and Mary living above the shop at 13 High Street, Oxford. Also living with them were his apprentice Richard Castle and Ann Castle, who was still at school; they were his nephew and niece.
In 1852 he was elected for the first time to the Town Council, and was re-elected in 1853, 1856, and 1859, serving as Sheriff in 1855/6. He was also a Governor of the Workhouse for a while.
On 12 April 1856 Jackson’s Oxford Journal announced that he was taking William Robert Juggins (the nephew of his late partner Robert Juggins) into partnership with him at 13 High Street, and that the business was now ‘Messrs. Castle & Juggins, Hatters, Shirt makers, Hosiers, Glovers &c’.
He was elected Mayor of Oxford for 1858/9.
Tragedy then struck. He was a regular rider to hounds and went out with the South Oxfordshire Hunt on 16 November 1860 despite being advised against his mount. He was thrown and badly injured when his horse shied and then trampled on his chest. He died the next day.
I am most grateful to Stephanie Jenkins of Oxford for permission to use this information from her Oxford Mayors website where more about Nathaniel’s career and his hunting accident can be found at: www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/mayors/1836_1962/castle_nathaniel_1858.
His father, Richard, is buried in Over Worton and his mother, Elizabeth, is named on a tombstone in our churchyard along with three other of her Hollier relatives. There are references to Holliers elsewhere on the History website; ownership of a C17th house on the choke point in Hempton and a descendant of Elizabeth’s brother William emigrated to Australia. There may also be a connection between an uncle of Nathaniel and William Merry who occupied Boulderdyke Farm in 1808. All of this and more will form a new article on the History website in due course.