Blewbury has a good set of Manorial Court Rolls from the early part of the eighteenth century. Consequently, many copyhold properties can be traced back to that time as far as ownership is concerned. Unfortunately for the enquirer, the Phillips family, who bought the Lordship of the manor in 1762, already held a great deal of copyhold land at this date and these became absorbed into the Lord’s freehold (taken from 'This Venerable Village').

There are many old properties within the village boundary. Traditional thatched, beamed properties exist and also those which have been rebuilt to brick wall whilst keeping the interior beams. All of the older houses, or sites of older houses, are shown in ‘This Venerable Village’ along with historical notes of each property and we do not intend to reproduce that information on this website. However, here are the thatched properties using their modern names with any older names in brackets where known:

Blue Haze

Carpenters

Chapmans

Church End Cottage

Cleve Cottage

Dragonwyke (Stockwells)

Gilmore Cottage

Healmwic

Laurences - named this since 1584

Nottingham Fee Cottage

Orchard Dene Cottage

Orchard Dene House

Stocks (Hummills)

Turkeys

Wayside Cottage

Winding Way (Stockwells)

Regarding names of houses, 'This Venerable Village' covers the origins of the original and current names of many of the village houses. However, a conversation with Bob (Ian) Gardiner recently revealed the background to the names of Martins and Insway. Bob and Iris purchased an unnamed house on Westbrook Street from a Miss Martin. When he completed his mortgage forms with the Abbey National it asked the address. He wrote 'Miss Martins, Westbrook Street'. A clerk at the Abbey National then crossed out the word `Miss’ so henceforth all mail was delivered to 'Martins, Westbrook Street, Blewbury'!

In later years when Bob, by now an accomplished builder, filled the space between Martins and Wayside Cottage with a dwelling he named it Insway, this being a combination of the end of MartINS and the beginning of WAYside Cottage.

Brookside is nearest the camera with Wayside Cottage after. Martins has its windows open and then Forge stands out.

This picture shows the Post Office in its Church Road location within the village. The house is now called Carramores and was restored in 2007/8. Today you can still see the iron brackets that held the sign in position on the house.

There exists a postcard with a close up of the Post Office sign taken face on.