By Linda Mowat. In the eighteenth century, the south-west corner of the Playing Close belonged to the Bowerman family. The earliest record we’ve found so far is a manor court roll of 1718 when Elizabeth Bowerman, a widow, died leaving two houses on this corner to her two sons Edward and Thomas. Edward’s house, which …
By Linda Mowat. The house on the north-west corner of the Playing Close, now No 3 Brown’s Lane, must have changed a great deal over the centuries. However, the original cottage was one of the properties leased to the people of Charlbury, Fawler and Finstock by Thomas Gifford in 1592; and for this reason it …
By Barbara Allison and Linda Mowat Where did the name of this road come from? The earliest map of Charlbury – the 1761 Thomas Pride map, tracings of which are in the museum – called the street we now know as Hixet Wood Hicks’s Wood. So like most people, we thought this street name was a …
By Linda Mowat John Penn, baker of Charlbury, died in 1695, leaving his worldly goods to his widow Ellenor. He did not list these items in his will, but the inventory subsequently made of his possessions offers us a rare insight into the life of a seventeenth-century tradesman in the town. John’s premises included a bakehouse and a boulting …
Here is the inventory of a labourer named Thomas Becket. He died in 1680. We don’t know his age, but he didn’t appear to have any children. His wife died a few days after him, and his brother in law, another labourer called John Archer, had probate for his possessions. £ s d In the …