Hot Summertown In The City

A rare Regency gem in the form of a Grade II*-listed Oxford villa with almost two acres of grounds has come to the market

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LONG before it became known as the city of dreaming spires, Oxford was an important Anglo-Saxon and medieval town at the confluence of the Rivers Cherwell and Thames, its development constrained by wide alluvial floodplains to the east and west. By the early 1800s, however, Oxford’s prosperity was underpinned by the power and wealth of the fast-expanding university colleges, which owned much of the land within the city walls.

With housing sites in the city both scarce and expensive, two of Oxford’s shrewdest developers—prominent local solicitor Crews Dudley and tallow chandler George Kimber —set out to create Summertown in 1820, a new, out-of-town residential estate on a one-mile-square site between the Banbury and Woodstock Roads, a mile and a half north of Oxford city centre.

Dudley and Kimber’s development was distinctive, combining small houses and cottages in the south-eastern corner of the estate, with the north half dominated by a group of six substantial villas set in their own grounds. These were the homes of successful Oxford merchants and professional men, whose businesses served the growing needs of the city and university. Several were built for their own use either by the developers themselves or by their close associates.

In 1824, the largest plot on the estate was put up for sale by Dudley and Kimber, with Kimber retaining the southern half. When he died in 1826, his site was sold, first by his son and then, in 1840, to Charles Shillingford, who already had a mortgage on it.