The Wilkinson Brothers

The Wilkinson Brothers The story of George and William Wilkinson: Two architects who built public buildings in Bampton

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The Wilkinson Brothers The story of George and William Wilkinson: Two architects who built public buildings in Bampton

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by Miriam James

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A Bampton Archive Publication

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A Bampton Archive Publication

Please visit www.bamptonarchive.org to view the extensive list of archive video and audio recordings, publications and exhibition catalogues.

The website also features a large searchable archive of documents, photographs and artefacts relating to Bampton going back thousands of years.

January 2018

The author acknowledges the respective copyright owners for the images and photographs used.

BCA-44/A January 2018

The Wilkinson Brothers The story of George and William Wilkinson: Two architects who built public buildings in Bampton

Based on a Bampton Community Archive exhibition held in the Vesey Room of the Bampton Library in January 2018

George Wilkinson 1814 - 1890

William Wilkinson 1819 - 1901

Public Buildings in Nineteenth Century Bampton The work of George and William Wilkinson

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n 1823 a map of Bampton was drawn up, showing every building and plot of land. Its purpose was to reallocate the land into “Inclosures�, and each building and plot of land was numbered and listed.

Today it also gives us a clear idea of the buildings that existed in the centre of the town.

We can see the Talbot Inn on the East side, with its stabling behind it; opposite the Talbot, on the West side of the central space, there was a row of houses with gardens behind them, and on the North side of the clearing there were three holdings:

Central Bampton in 1823 (the National School is plot number 502) To the South of this central space there was a building with no garden around it; this was the National School, which had opened in 1812. It catered for the children of the labourers of Bampton, charging a few pence each week to teach them the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic.

The space at the meeting of the three roads into the town was empty. There was a weekly market, but 7

the stall-holders had to set up their stands in the open. The local government met in the Church, and were known as the Vestry; there was no need for another meeting place.

Fifty years later the appearance of the market place had changed fundamentally. In the centre of the triangle stood the Town Hall, and a second National School, built on a site in Church Street, had replaced the original School. These two important buildings were designed by two brothers, George and William Wilkinson, the sons of a builder and auctioneer in Witney; in 1838 George drew up the plans for the Town Hall, while in 1870 William designed the new National School.

Who were these two men, and what else did they do? What became of the buildings they designed? This booklet attempts to answer those questions.

The Town Hall in Bampton The market in Bampton was well established. It was listed as a market town in Domesday Book – the only Oxfordshire market listed – and while over the centuries neighbouring towns had developed their own markets, the vestiges of Bampton market still existed. The horse market was well known; but the tradition of a weekly market remained, and producers could sell their surplus or buy small quantities as they needed them.

Until the 1830s, however, there was no recognized market place for this buying and selling to take place.

Stalls could be set up each week on the north side of the triangular piece of land in the middle of the town, opposite the Talbot Inn, but they gave little protection to the goods from wind or weather, nor to the buyers and sellers who used them; and the town was keen to keep its place as a centre of trade. How could it attract more people?

By the seventeenth century most of the towns of any size in West Oxfordshire had a building that housed a market, which was generally held on a particular day of each week. These buildings were often arcaded at ground level, to keep the traders and their goods dry, and to allow quick access from the street; and they also had a room upstairs which could be used as a meeting place for the governing body of the town.

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Burford Town Hall The black-and-white timber fronted building, erected on stone pillars, was once the medieval meeting place for the wealthy wool merchants, who also paid their tolls or tax here.

The oldest local market building was the Tolsey, in Burford; it stood – and still stands – on the corner of the High Street and Sheep Street, and still houses a weekly market.

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Faringdon Town Hall The Town Hall in the centre of Faringdon was built between 1650 and 1660. It served as a setting for a market at street level and a conference room on the first floor. It is open on three sides on the ground floor, and a staircase built against the fourth wall reaches the Conference chamber on the upper floor.

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The Butter Cross and Town Hall, Witney There had been a Town Hall in Witney since the seventeenth century. The Butter Cross, as its name implies, sold dairy goods, and the ground oor of the eighteenth century Town Hall served as an overow for that; it was a more formal building, with an arched gallery above its pillars, and rusticated corner supports.

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Abingdon Town Hall Slightly further away than Witney there was the elegant example of the Town Hall and Market Place in Abingdon, designed and built by Kempster, master builder to Christopher Wren, between 1678 and 1682. It housed a courtroom on the ďŹ rst oor, raised on open arches over a space for a market. Its keystones, with glazed arched windows above, epitomized the grandeur and grace of Restoration skill.

By the start of the nineteenth century, Abingdon was within reach of Bampton by road or river, and there must have been many people who had seen this outstanding building for themselves. Its top floor, and the cupola above it, were evidently more than they thought necessary, but the two lower storeys must have won their approval.

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The building of a Town Hall in Bampton was the idea of a group of men, led by Mr T. Denton, of the neighbouring hamlet of Lew; his memorial tablet in the Church there records his life.

The memorial to Thomas Denton in Lew Church A subscription fund was started, with the idea of putting up a building for the market, and also to hold Petty Sessions – Mr Thomas Denton was a J.P. - and to carry out other business.

The subscription was evidently an immediate success; the Oxford City and County Chronicle of 4th May 1838 records that the amount received was “much larger than had been anticipated”, and that “there is every probability of the desirable objects being accomplished”.

Once they had raised enough money, these men looked for a designer for the new building, which would stand in such a prominent place in the town. There was, at this time, no training for an architect; the designer of a building had only the qualification that he had served an apprenticeship. Who better, then, than young George Wilkinson?

The Wilkinson family were well-known builders in Witney; William Wilkinson appears in various guises in the nineteenth-century census returns for Witney, all connected with the building trade – builder, contractor, auctioneer; while his elder son, George, had recently designed the Workhouse in Witney, to which the indigenous poor people of Bampton were sent after the Poor Law Act of 1834.

The story of George’s successful project of the Workhouse would have been known to many people in the town: how a grand London designer had been employed, and had drawn up a plan for a red-brick building; how the people of Witney had poured scorn on this design and pointed out that the site of the proposed Workhouse was immediately next to a stone quarry; how young George Wilkinson, aged only twenty-one, had taken on the task and had produced an original and attractive building in stone, to the great satisfaction of his employers.

Not only was the new Poor House practical in its use of local stone; it was designed to house the four categories of paupers in different parts of the building: there were wings for men, for women, for boys and for girls; the administration was carried out by the Master, who lived in the central block; and there were two smaller wings springing from the central block. There was a resident Matron, and a teacher 13

for the pauper children, and an imposing entrance onto the steep road which became known as Tower Hill. Trees were planted round the site, perhaps to enhance the sense of an estate; across the fields beside the stream called ‘Emma’s Dyke’ the church of St Mary was silhouetted against the skyline.

Plan of the Witney Union Workhouse at Tower Hill, Curbridge

The plan was so successful that George Wilkinson was asked to build other Poor Houses, notably at Chipping Norton, where he used the same design, and over the next few years he designed Workhouses for five other Oxfordshire towns; he was clearly the man to go to for a public building.

The builder chosen for the Town Hall was James Pettifer; he was a stonemason, living in Bampton, who owned cottages near the church; he had also owned a small number of strips in the common fields until the passing of Bampton’s Enclosure Act of 1823. Unlike so many of his fellow strip farmers who had squandered the money paid in compensation, he had sold the land allotted to him and had invested the money in renting cottages from Exeter College, as well as other houses on long repairing leases. He then set up a building business, and by 1838 he was so well established that he was offered the contract for the proposed building.

By the summer the sum of money collected for the proposed Town Hall had reached a satisfactory amount, and on Wednesday August 8th 1838, Thomas Denton, who was one of the Lords of the Manor of Bampton, laid the foundation stone.

The event is recorded in a stone – maybe the “foundation stone” itself? – built into the north side of the Town Hall. It is of soft, Cotswold stone, yellow in colour, and the inscription is now barely legible; but the date of the building is given, with the names of the three men most involved:

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THE FIRST STONE OF THIS TOWN HALL WAS LAID AUGUST 8, AD 1838 T DENTON ESQ G WILKINSON ARCHITECT J PETTIFER BUILDER

The Oxford City and County Chronicle of the following Saturday related that ‘a numerous body of gentlemen, yeomen, and tradesmen met at Bampton Manor, the residence of Frederick Whittaker, Esq, and escorted him to the Market-place, in the centre of which the building is to be erected.’

In addition to this procession, the church bells – ‘a merry peal’ - were rung, and visitors came from all the villages and towns around.

At twelve o’clock the procession started from the ‘scene of action’. It consisted solely of men; the ladies had already assembled in the market place ‘in large numbers’, and were sitting in the wagons which had been pulled into the square..

The procession wound its way from the Manor to the Market Place, led by the Beadle; behind him came a Standard Bearer, carrying a beautiful flag with the inscription “Prosperity to the Town of Bampton”.

After the flag came the band, and two more Standard Bearers. The architect, George Wilkinson, and the builder, James Pettifer, followed them, with a couple of workmen carrying ‘emblems of trade’; next came Mr Denton, flanked by two Vicars, Mr Adams and Mr Edison, and the entire Building Committee.

Behind these worthies walked a ‘large body of Gentlemen, Yeomen and Tradesmen, four abreast’, and, bringing up the rear, several hundred workmen.

Mr Denton laid the foundation stone, which was duly inscribed with the names of the architect and the builder, and made a ‘most excellent’ speech; the Queen was cheered ‘nine times nine’, and the grandees went on to carve a dinner of beef and plum pudding (with ‘plenty of ale’) for between 500 and 600 poor people.

Their duty done, at three o’clock the sixty gentlemen sat down to dinner in a booth outside the Talbot Inn, which Mrs King, the landlady, had thoughtfully put up. Their feast, with ‘glass and song’ went on until eight o’clock, when the three leading men left; but the rest of the party went on for another two hours, and included a rendering of “God Save the Queen” in honour of the new, young Queen Victoria.

The ladies of the party, who do not seem to have been included in the dinner, gave tea and cake to about four hundred poor children; and in the evening there was dancing at the Talbot Inn until dawn.

The design of the new Town Hall echoed several features of similar buildings; downstairs there was a central area with open arches on each wall; the arches were broken by keystones. This downstairs space was designed as an open space for the market.

From the east end of the symmetrical building, wooden stairs rose up to the room above. This room was the council chamber, where meetings could be held; its windows were narrower than the ones for the market, and they were grouped in three lights, their curved tops again broken by keystones.

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Bampton Town Hall, illustrated in the “History of the Parish and the Town of Bampton” by Rev. J.A. Giles, in 1848

Rev. J A Giles’ drawing of 1848 shows two chimneys on the north and south sides of the roof; there must have been two fireplaces, and perhaps two rooms, on the upper floor, where “the magistrates for the division hold their meetings, and public assemblies occasionally take place,” according to Slater’s Oxfordshire Directory of 1850.

The Fire Service at that date was privately run, and was paid by the owner of the building where a fire occurred; firemen were reluctant to come out to fires in houses which were not insured and might not pay them, so owners who could afford to insure their property showed the mark of their Insurance Company on the outside of their houses.

On the outside of the building there were rectangular panels set back into the walls of the upper floor.

The two south-facing panels held the plaques of the “Liverpool & London & Globe”, and showed the insignia of the insurance company, the figures of the phoenix, the globe and the flames of a fire.

The Liverpool & London & Globe plaque, showing their insignia of a phoenix, a globe and the flames of a fire.

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This precaution was especially important for public buildings; the memory of the burning of Parliament, in 1832, would have been fresh in people’s minds.

When the building was finished the lords of the manor of Bampton agreed with the subscribers to pass the ownership of the building to Trustees, for the use of the inhabitants for ever; but there was not enough money to pay the conveyance fees, and the transition was held over. The upper room was used for the meetings of the magistrates and of the Board of Inspectors, and could also show travelling exhibitions and house public lectures; a small fee was charged for its use, but, as Rev. Giles pointed out, it was ‘hardly sufficient to heat the room and to pay for the windows, which are broken by the boys congregated in the market-place below’. The frequent references to mending windows in the accounts of the Hall show that he was right.

By 1850 Slater’s Oxfordshire Directory was able to describe the Town Hall as “neat”, and to add that ‘public assemblies occasionally take place there’; but three years later its practical use was in doubt. The lower part is commended as ‘small but commodious’, but by this time it had become apparent that ‘this building could be more serviceable to the inhabitants in respect to the purpose for which it was erected; but the neighbouring markets of Witney, Faringdon, Burford and even Oxford, are too attractive to the farmers, and the market of Bampton, which is held on Wednesdays, seldom presents more than a few sellers of eggs and butter.’ The Town Hall had failed in one of its primary purposes; it was no use as a market hall. A reason for its failure may have been the development of transport to these neighbouring towns; the new turnpike roads made the use of carriages and carts safer and more comfortable, and people could go further afield to do their marketing.

As its lack of purpose became more apparent, even Squire Edward Whitaker admitted that it had become ‘a white elephant’; within forty years its redundancy had become so clear that in 1884 part of the ground floor was converted into a subscription reading room, where for a few pence the men of the village, who were now presumed to be literate, could read the newspapers of the day. By 1891 a small lending library had been added – again for the use of men. Were their wives thought to be illiterate, or just too busy to read?

The building had originally been given to the town of Bampton; the first mention of it in the minutes of the Vestry is a reference to the new lighting scheme of 1840, when it was suggested that four of the twelve proposed lamps should be set up ‘at the Town Hall’.

Fifteen years later, on 15 November 1856, the Vestry met to ‘consider the expediency of appointing a committee to take charge of the Town Hall for the benefit of the inhabitants of the Parish’. A Committee was set up, two Trustees were appointed; and the duties of supervising the letting of the Hall, and the fees paid for it, also came under the jurisdiction of the Vestry, on the grounds that ‘this Meeting assumes the Town Hall to be the property of the Parish generally’.

In spite of its enlargement, the Town Hall does not seem to have served as a place for general entertainment; maybe it was associated too closely with the richer people in the town. During the winter of 1894-5 a series of ‘Popular Entertainments’ were given, with an admission price of twopence, in the National School instead.

In 1887, when Parish Councils were established to take the place of the Vestry as the means of local government, one of their duties was to ‘maintain parish property for the benefit of the inhabitants.’

The Town Hall Committee was authorized to do repairs as necessary; for this they could charge a rate of three pence in the pound, a sum which was not enough to maintain the building. The Local Council Act of 1894 replaced the authority of the Vestry with Parish Councils; and the Town Hall became the legal property of Bampton Parish Council.

The Reading Room Committee had free use of the lower room, so long as they kept the room in repair; the caretaker was paid a guinea a year for his services, and had to be present whenever the Town Hall 17

was in use. On occasions when the Hall was used by a travelling company, a charge of ÂŁ5.0.0 was made; its use by members of the town remained free of charge.

At first meetings of the Parish Council took place in the National School, perhaps out of habit; but in March 1902 their Annual General Meeting was held at the Town Hall. In June of that year a flagsta was put up, to serve as part of the celebrations of the coronation of King George V. By 1905 it became clear that the staircase and the means of exit were inadequate, even dangerous, and a plan was drawn up for a new staircase. A wide stone staircase was built, to the north and east of the Hall; its outer walls matched with the existing one in material and in design, so there is a bricked-up arch on the inner wall. Access to the upper room was now by a door on the north side of the building, and from here the stone staircase led to the upper floor of the Hall.

At the same time the lower parts of the windows on the south side of the building were filled in, though the arches on the west end remained open, to form a shelter for people waiting for transport. A urinal was also installed, in the space under the stairs, for the use of the people of the town.

The enclosed staircase, added in 1905.

This expense of this work was well beyond the resources of the Parish Council. Mr Philip Southby, who lived in Bampton for forty years, and who was by then a member of the Parish Council, stepped into the breach, and paid for the improvements.

The arch on the right shows the original outside wall.

When Mr Southby died in 1908 a clock was put up on the east wall of the Town Hall to commemorate his generosity:

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The enlarged east end of the Town Hall

Bampton Town Hall today 19

The clock, however, was not entirely satisfactory; it had to be mended every few years, and did not always keep reliable time. It was finally taken down in 1972, partly because it was said to be no longer safe. John Tailor, who ran the Market Square Garage, bought it for £5, and put it up on the garage forecourt; when the Lavender Square flats replaced the garage, the clock was sold to a private buyer.

During the First World War the social use of the Town Hall increased: there were whist drives, and a “smoking concert” to aid recruiting for the Oxfordshire Volunteer Regiment; and immediately after the end of the War a meeting was held to discuss a War Memorial, and the Hall was licensed for plays.

At various times attempts were made to improve the look of the Hall: in November 1910 creepers were planted around the walls, but by the next year they had all died; Mr Blackburne, of Weald Manor, undertook to replace them, and also to put up a War Memorial on the West side of the Town Hall, though nothing seems to have come of that.

A subsidiary purpose of the Town Hall lasted for more than a century: the East end of the building housed the Fire Engine, adapting the shape of the building, and especially of its doors.

The Bampton Fire Brigade in front of the Town Hall

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To suit the size of the engine itself, when a new Bedford engine was bought, a major alteration was needed to accommodate it:

The extension to accommodate the Bedford Fire Engine

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During the Second World War an air raid siren was put up on the Hall, to warn the people of Bampton of danger; but after the War the housing of the Fire Station gradually became the primary purpose of the Town Hall. The Parish Council meetings were still held there, but much of their original work was taken over by the District Council; the Magistrates of the Court of Bampton Hundred moved to new premises in Witney; concerts and plays found new and more convenient premises in the Village Hall.

The Bampton Fire Service went on using the Town Hall to house its engine until 1970, when a new engine house was built on the outskirts of the town. The space that then became unused caused a major re-assessment of the usefulness of the entire building.

1970: The meeting to discuss the future of the Town Hall in Bampton

The Town Hall remained a drain on the public purse and there was talk of pulling it down; but in 1970 a far-seeing parish council renovated it with a loan of more than ÂŁ6,000 from the Public Works Loan Board. The lower floor remained the property of the Parish Council, new lavatories were installed in the former fire engine room; and the room upstairs was let to a newly-formed West Oxfordshire Arts Association.

The proposal that there should be a place for local artists to show their work in the upstairs room of the Town Hall was first made by John Tilley, who had started an Anglo-American College. It was taken up by the craft teacher at Radley College, John Birkhead, and his artist wife, Margaret Ralston. They had seen the need for a display centre for paintings and craft in the southwest of the county, and were keen to encourage other arts, such as music, drama and photography in the area, and they were joined by Charles Mussett, who taught Art at Radley College.

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Within two years the West Oxfordshire Arts Association was founded, with the upstairs room of the Hall at its centre; it expanded the arts covered to include panels on music, drama, craft and photography; and its influence included encouraging the first performance of Bampton Opera, the Lenthall Concerts at Burford School, the production of a children’s newspaper during the school holidays, and performance of an annual pantomime in the Village Hall; it was also there that in 1974 a delighted audience heard a poem about her teeth recited by a young woman from Stanford in-the-Vale called Pam Ayres.

The Town Hall continues to hold exhibitions of work by the West Ox Arts in the room upstairs, and to house the meetings of the Parish Council in a room downstairs; it is now also the home of the Post Office and has become an asset to the town.

The West Ox Arts exhibition in Bampton Town Hall in November 2017 23

The National School 1870 The first National School was built in Bampton in 1820; it stood almost in the middle of the street, opposite the Talbot Inn, and its two storeys housed both boys and girls. The Enclosure Map of 1823 shows that it had no garden attached to it:

A drawing of the ďŹ rst National School By 1870 there were more pupils than this building could accommodate, and the need for a new National School was urgent. The Earl of Shrewsbury gave a piece of land in Church View, and the building was to be financed by subscriptions from the people of Bampton.

In 1839 George Wilkinson had been appointed architect of the Poor Law Commission in Ireland, and was no longer available; but the people of Bampton would have known the work of his younger brother, William. At the age of twenty-two he had designed the church at Lew:

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Lew Church in 1842

Lew Church exterior in 2017

Lew Church interior in 2017

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By 1870 William Wilkinson had become well known as a designer of public buildings: ten years earlier he had designed both the Witney Police Station and the Chapel for the Workhouse:

The Police Station, Witney

The Workhouse Chapel, Witney 26

He was becoming known as a designer of houses in the latest “Gothic” style, with asymmetrical gabled roofs and tall lancet windows:

A house designed by William Wilkinson During the decade from 1860 to 1870 William Wilkinson was employed by St John’s College, Oxford, to plan the development known as Norham Manor; this lay to the north of the newly-developed University Parks. The plan was to have an estate of houses of various sizes; to the north some groups of terraced houses were planned, but the houses next to the Parks stood in their own grounds, facing onto a road which ran round the estate and led to a single entrance guarded by a gatehouse.

He had also designed the schools at Hailey and at Minster Lovell:

Minster Lovell School 27

These buildings were designed with references to the Gothic revival of the mid-nineteenth century: their roofs were gabled, and their windows echoed those of medieval churches. There were decorative corbels below the roofs, and sometimes buttresses on the corners of the buildings:

Corbels and buttresses at Bampton National School The National School designed for Bampton is one of the more exaggeratedly neo-Gothic buildings designed by William Wilkinson, its gables more pointed than those at Minster Lovell and uneven in height, its stone rough-cast and dark grey in colour, the lancet windows on the front of the building with trefoil headings. It must have been the height of architectural fashion at the time of its building.

Bampton National School The northern face of the School was less elaborate; its windows had squared tops and its gables were less pointed, and this lack of detail was continued on the other two fronts.

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Bampton National School from the north

Inside the school there were three classrooms, two large and one small. They were wood panelled, and each had a fireplace. The pupils sat on benches at long wooden desks; photographs of 1901 show pictures and diagrams on the walls.

A classroom in 1901

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There were almost two hundred pupils; the headmaster and two other teachers taught them, with assistance from ‘monitors’ – older children who could pass on pieces of information from teacher to pupil, so that the size of each class could be increased.

In 1927 the school became Bampton Senior School, and catered for children up to the age of fourteen who had failed the examination for education at a Grammar School. With the growth in numbers, new buildings were needed, and two temporary wooden ‘Horsa’ buildings were built in the former playground:

Temporary Horsa buildings: the dining hall and home economics centre These buildings were available to for hire, and over the years they housed the regular lunches on Wednesdays for older people of Bampton, the “Bush Club”; they were also used by local Scouts groups for leaders’ training.

Today the Old School has become the Community Centre, and is home to the weightlifting, boxing and youth clubs, as well as the Bush Club.

A former classroom, converted to a boxing ring 30

There is also a new room, built on to the original school, which can be hired for meetings, classes and fund-raising events.

The new meeting room at the Community Centre

The front of the Old School Community Centre today

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The National School at Bampton was not the only building that William Wilkinson designed in 1870.

It is surprising that he had enough time to give to it, because in the same year he was busy with a much larger project, the building of a new hotel in Oxford. This Hotel stood on the corner of Broad Street and St Giles, opposite the Ashmolean Museum; it was called The Randolph Hotel.

The blue plaque for William Wilkinson in Broad Street, Oxford

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The Randolph Hotel, Oxford

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