Oxford topography : an essay / by Herbert Hurst.

  • Hurst, Herbert, 1833-1913.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Oxford topography : an essay / by Herbert Hurst. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Hi] ST. ALDATE’S TO THE CASTLE 7r in it, but onely that it leadeth towards the Preaching Friers over the Streame on the left, and to the Grey Friers directly goeing on, hard by Litle-gate, of both which wee have alreadie spoken. From hence wee passe backwards againe to the Aimes House (sometyme called the Tenement of (Segrim)) right over against Ch. Ch. great Gate, where wee see, on our right hand, the Church of St. Aldate.’ In Brewers Street several features of interest have been already noted, and now Hutten explains to what parts it led. The name Littlegate is still current in our own days ; and though the gate itself has disappeared, Skelton has engraved it from an old drawing. It differed little from the other gates, but the frequent mention of its being let by the city as a lodging-house is noticeable. Nearly every bastion in the city walls seems, at some time or other, to have been converted into rooms, by partitioning the original small galleries leading to the different ranges of crenelles or openings. One or two ends of rafters still exist in the walls of the bastion towards Holywell gallows; and in the Bishops’ bastion the whole of the beams and rafters could, till within the last fifty years, be seen as they had existed for three centuries at least. A rental of the City, 1323 (Tw. 23, p. 237), shows us to what class the lodgers over the gate belonged ; 13s. 4d. from the scholars at Littlegate for the solar; students of law most probably. Two years later (ibid.), From the Principal for the chamber at Littlegate towards the Friars Preachers 8s. In 1405 (Tw. 23, p. 240), From the house over Littlegate near the Friars Preachers which William Copeland lately held 8,r. 4 d.; which Twyne rubricates as ‘Scholars, house or chamber.’ In 1409 (ibid. p. 242) is a like entry. In 1448 (ibid. p. 393), from Charters in the City Collection, parish of St. Ebbe, we readRichard Spragot, mayor, and the whole community lease a chamber over the gate near the Friars Minors, with two rooms there under it. The room over the outside South gate became a Berkshire court, and that over Bocardo a prison. The Almshouse also has been noticed, and modern research has perhaps done nothing to refute the idea that this was ‘Segrim’s’ Tenement, which is clearly the word that Hutten omitted. Mr. Macleane (Hist, of Pemb. Coll. c. 1) has pretty satisfactorily proved that besides the domus, the great house of Robert Segrym at the rear of the Almshouse, there was a tenement of Richard Segrym upon the site of the Almshouse itself, and a house also owned by him in
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