Patrick Comerford
I stayed overnight in Oxford at the end of last week in the Summertown area at the north end of Banbury Road. This is a major road leading north out of the city centre, running from Saint Giles at the south end, through the leafy suburbs of North Oxford and Summertown. Woodstock Road runs parallel to and to the west of Banbury Road.
Summertown is home to several independent schools and some of the most expensive houses in Oxford. In the past, the residents of Summertown have included Iris Murdoch and John Bayley. Summertown is also home to much of Oxford’s broadcast media, including the BBC Oxford studios on Banbury Road.
Most of North Oxford came into being the university decided in 1877 to allow college fellows to marry and live in private houses rather living in college rooms in college, and large houses were built on Banbury Road and Woodstock Road on land that once belonged to Saint John’s College.
I had stayed before at the south end of Banbury Road, when I was a guest in Wycliffe Hall. But this was my second time to stay at this end of Banbury Road in Summertown: we stayed there overnight after I was discharged from the John Radcliffe Hospital following a stroke in 2022; and I was back there again last week, three years later, for yet another medical procedure.
This stretch of Banbury Road in Summertown is known for its shops, from boutique book shops and niche stationery shops to bakeries, cafés and estate agents, as well as branches of Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury.
Breckon and Breckon must have the most attractive premises for any estate agents in Summertown. But their premises, Twining House, was also one of the earliest grocer’s shop on Banbury Road.
When I saw Twining House and the former United Reformed Church side-by-side on Banbury Road last week, I thought one had been the church hall for the other. But, instead, I found they told the story of Alderman Francis Twining, an enlightened and benevolent philanthropist and entrepreneur who had risen from began life as an impoverished child, became a grocer’s boy at a young age and rose to being the Mayor of Oxford and one of the main property developers in late Victorian and Edwardian north Oxford.
The builder Thomas Henry Kingerlee (1843-1929), who designed Summertown Congregational Church, was a Liberal city councillor and he too was the Mayor of Oxford, in 1898-1899 and 1911-1912.
Kingerlee built a number of prominent buildings in Oxford, including the Rivermead Hospital, Headington Junior School, the original New Theatre, Elliston & Cavell (later Debenhams) and the Oxford Marmalade Factory. He used patterns similar to Summertown Congregational Church a decade later when he built the grocery shop for Twining in 1902 next door at 294 Banbury Road, now known as Twining House.
Francis Twining (1848-1929) was born in Thompson Buildings, St Aldate’s, Oxford, and was baptised in Saint Aldate’s Church on 7 May 1848. His mother, Mary Ann, was born in Evesham, Worcestershire, in 1811; his father Robert Twining was a stonemason and was distantly related to the Twining’s Tea family. The Twining family originated in Gloucestershire, where they were weavers and fulling millers. Recession drove the family to London in 1684, bringing with them nine-year-old Thomas Twining, later the founder of the tea business.
Francis was only nine when his father Robert Twining, who was working on Addington Church, was killed in an accident near Winslow railway station while trying to catch the last train back to Oxford on 30 January 1858. Soon after, the young Francis Twining began working as a grocer’s boy for Grimbly Hughes at 55-56 Cornmarket.
By the age of 22, Francis Twining was a grocer’s assistant and living in Victor Street, Jericho, when he married Elizabeth Ann Smith (26) in the newly-oepned Saint Barnabas Church, Jericho, in 1870. Two years later, in 1872, they were living over his own grocer’s shop at 23 Saint Ebbe’s Street.
When a vacancy arose in the West Ward of the city in 1879, Twining was the only candidate and was elected to the council; he was still in his 20s. Although he was not a freeman, he was elected Sheriff of Oxford in 1885.
Around this time, he moved to Llantrisant House at 78 Kingston Road, near the corner of St Margaret’s Road. By 1890, he had moved into a new home, Summertown House on the Banbury Road, and this was his address when he was elected as a Liberal member of the town council.
Twining bought 25 acres at Hawkswell Farm in 1895, and combined this with 25 acres at Stone’s Estate for a major housing development in North Oxford, building 350 houses in all. He also laid out Portland, Lonsdale, King’s Cross, Victoria, Hamilton and Lucerne Roads in 1901. He also bought the White Hart Hotel at Cornmarket in 1899.
Meanwhile, Twining donated the site for Summertown Congregational Church – later the United Reformed Church – that was built on this stretch of the Banbury Road in 1893. He lived in Summertown House, a 15-roomed mansion at the junction of Apsley Road and Banbury Road. He opened the Summertown branch of his grocery chain in 1902, and at one time he had six shops throughout Oxford.
Twining’s new purpose-built branch at 294 Banbury Road, Summertown, opened in 1902. But later that year, he handed over his wholesale and retail grocery businesses to three of his sons. By 1915, there were six Twining Brothers branches throughout Oxford: the original shop at 23-24 St Ebbe’s Street, 53 Cornmarket Street, 16 North Parade Avenue, 46 High Street, 56 St Aldate’s Street and 294 Banbury Road.
Twining was a member of the city council in Oxford for 50 years, first as a councillor and then as an alderman, and in 1905 he was elected Mayor of Oxford for 1905-1906. As Mayor, he welcomed the Chinese Imperial Commissioners to Oxford in 1906.
Twining donated the site for Saint Michael and All Angels, a new Church of England parish church for Summertown, in 1909.
During World War I, his youngest son, Sidney Twining, died of his wounds in Thessaloniki on 27 February 1917. After the war, Alderman Twining gave £500 to buy the site of the Summertown War Memorial in 1919.
Elizabeth Twining was 84 when she died at Summertown in 1927; Francis Twining was 81 when died at Summertown House in 1929; they are buried at Wolvercote Cemetery.
His sons Ernest, Gilbert, and Francis Twining, continued to run Twining Bros. There were still six Twining’s shops in 1935, but some were in larger premises: 15-19 George Street, 164 Cowley Road, 15 North Parade Avenue, 83-84 High Street, 294 Banbury Road and 3 Woodstock Road. All of these except the High Street branch were still open in 1955.
By 1971, the shop on Banbury Road had become Moore’s wineshop, and by 1976 the only Twining’s branches that survived in Oxford were at North Parade Avenue and Woodstock Road.
Summertown House was sold at auction in 1939, and is now graduate housing known as Mansion House, with three blocks of graduate flats in the grounds.
Oxford city council decided to rename George Street in Summertown as Twining Street in 1955. But 62 residents signed a petition, saying they did not want to live on a street named after a grocer. What must those (presumably) Tory voters have thought in the decades that followed when Ted ‘Grocer’ Heath and the grocer’s daughter Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister? Instead, the street was named Middle Way. But the name of Francis Twining is still celebrated in Twining House and the offices of Breckon and Breckon.
As for the church next door, that is a story for another day, I hope.
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