Bridge Street shops, pubs and houses

Advert in Witney Gazette 1984 Duttons Shop in Bridge Street
Selling Wine, Beers, Soirits, Fruit and Vegetable.

Th Horse Shoe Public House in Bridge Street,

Scene of the horse fair in Bridge Street outside the Horse Shoe Inn and Percy Hughes' butchers shop. It must have been taken before 1925 because the Horse Shoe was gutted by fire that year. Hurdles placed over the ground floor windows were to stop the horses from sticking their heads through the windows. Horses with a white spot on their rumps have been sold.

Dancing on Bridge Street outside Castle View Farm in 1948 George Dafter is the fool

Old photograph of the Dancers outside The Elephant and Castle, Bridge Street early 1900s

Horse Fair pre-WW I outside the Wheat Sheaf inn. Boys are collecting horse manure for vegetable gardens. Note the windows are quite different in what is now the HSBC bank and the butchers. The Wheat Sheaf became the Post Office about 1971 and became a private house in 2010 when the post office moved to the Town Hall and it became a private house.

Bridge St. Horses walking free

Running a horse past Sherborne House to show its soundness. Many people looked forward to the Horse Fair because they met friends from neighbouring villages who walked over, plus, the men who brought the horses travelled the country and they brought something of the wider outside into Bampton.

Marion and Ted Lay lived in Bampton all their married life and as Jamie Wheeler says

"They were the loveliest people you could ever meet. I claim a slight family association as their daughter Marjorie married Jim Brooks. It was a second marriage for them both and Jim had previously been married to my Auntie Joyce. I always regarded him as my uncle. Ted was a Morris dancer years ago and we always did one dance outside his house on Whit Monday and for Mrs. Lay after Ted died. Mrs. Lay was sister of Harry Pocock whose name crops up on this site quite often. He died the day I was born (or so Mrs. Pocock used to tell me)"