Adapted from Source: www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk
Like so many houses in the parish, The Old Wharf is of coursed clunch rubble with brick dressings under an old plain-tile roof with brick stacks. The original house was made up of 3 ‘wings’. It is 2 storeys with attics. The left cross wing is probably late C17 and has a stepped brick plinth, the brick-quoined windows have mostly been altered and now have rendered surrounds. The rear part is slightly later and has brick quoins and timber-framed gable with brick infill. The central range has a brick inscribed ‘RC 1726’ and there is a Sun Insurance plaque. Rubble and brick wall returns from left wing along road and includes brick piers with ball finials and wrought-iron double gates. Interior features include large back-to-back open fireplaces with chamfered bressummers and adjoining entrance lobby.
The engraved brick bearing the inscription ‘RC1726’ is probably a clue to who built the house but to date no confirmation of RC can be found.
The house believed to be an old malthouse was part of Old Wharf Farm which from the mid-1800s until 1917 was farmed by the Ashby family.
Descendents of Robert Quinton Ashby born 1699 in Northants who married Mary Lamb of Shillingford the earlier Ashby’s were Quakers and have associations with other properties in the parish such as Quaker House & Riverside which was built around 1760 by James who married Mary Tripp of Brightwell.
It is his son, Joseph, described as Yeoman of Old Wharf Farm, that we first find in an 1826 Poll book where he is farming his land along with land belonging to his brother James and a John West, and on the 1841 census living next door to James with his wife Gratian, nee Birch. They had nine children, Mary, Jane, Joseph, Ann, John, Elizabeth, Martha, Ellen and Henry.
The recorded size of the farm varies from census to census but in 1851 Joseph is farming 168 acres and employing 9 men. Gratian died in 1854 and is buried in St Laurence Churchyard. Joseph dies two years later but there is no marked grave for him at St Laurence Church.
Following the death of his father, Henry inherited the farm and continued to farm it for the next 57 years employing at times 7 men and 13 boys.
The exact area of the farm is unknown but it did extend to the Keen Ferry House and over to the Wallingford Road and the brochure for the sale in 1946 states ‘Another approach to the house is through handsome hammered-iron double entrance gates, from the main Wallingford road, across the paddock.’ However, it is thought this was never quite as grand as it sounds and may have been ’estate agent talk’.
After Henry’s death there were two sales of property and land, one mentioning Lime Farm at Shillingford but where this was is uncertain.
Henry’s son, Frank, continued to live and farm at Old Wharf Farm until his death in 1917, he was the last Ashby to farm Old Wharf Farm. Frank was buried in St Laurence Churchyard in April 1917. Again, there is no legible marked grave.
The 1921 census shows Fanny, Frank’s widow with her son Henry living next door to Riverside so presumably still in Old Wharf Farm, she died in 1931 in Berkshire and does not appear to be buried in Warborough.
The next owner we can confirm is Capt. Gordon W Halsey, ex Captain in 1st Royal Dragoons, and his wife Marian, who are listed on 1939 register as Company Directors, but in 1940 when Norman Belcher did a local ‘census’ of the parish the Halsey’s were absent and a Miss De Lacy listed.
We come now to 1946 when Henry Strauss MP bought the house.
Photos taken from the 1946 Sales Brochure
Henry Strauss MP bought the house from Mr L Freeman on 26th September. It was purchased for the use of Austrian relations, Mr & Mrs Egon Gallia*link or not? who had escaped from Vienna in 1938 and had managed to reach Britain where they were confined during the war. Mr Strauss was anxious to find a house with modern conveniences, such as adequate bathrooms, as the government regulations of the time limited the amount that could be spent on improvements to £100. The Galllia’s and their two children moved in in 1946 staying until the early 1950s when they purchased a property near Wheatley. <https://gedenkbuch.univie.ac.at/en/person/egon-gallia (this link may not go on the website – family have yet to authorise)
The Old Wharf c1940’s
Mr and Mrs Strauss and their children had continued to live in London but used the house for weekends and school holidays. Mr Strauss, who was a member of Parliament and subsequently a member of the House of Lords, where he attended regularly continued to make his main residence their house in London until moving permanently to Shillingford at the end of his life. His wife, who was a sculptor, had increasingly spent her time at Old Wharf having had a studio and workshop built in the garden for her use.
Raised to the peerage in 1955, Lord Conesford QC was born Henry George Strauss in 1892 in London. He was called to the Bar, at the Inner Temple in 1919. He was a member of parliament for Norwich from 1935-1948, MP for the combined Universities 1946-1948, when the Labour government abolished the seat. He was MP for Norwich South from 1951-1955.
During his time as an MP, he served as a Junior Minister in the following departments Attorney General, Ministry of Works, Town and Country Planning and The Board of Trade. In 1972, after Poland became an independent country, he was awarded the Knight Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in recognition of his support for Poland at the time of the Yalta Conference having resigned his position in Churchill’s government in protest.
Lord Conesford died in 1974. Lady Conesford continued to live and work at Old Wharf until moving to 23 The Green South, Warborough in 1978.
She sold the house to Mr and Mrs Arnander who were known to the family.
Studies of planning applications show that successive owners have made some significant changes to the property to improve the flow of the property and to make it suitable for family living. Indeed Mr & Mrs Arnander were granted permission to demolish a portion and replace with a small extension.
More recent residents include Richard Rowse in the 1990s who was followed by Mr & Mrs M Blythe when he moved into Warborough to live on The Green North.
Enda McVeigh, a Professor of Gynaecology and Expert in Fertility at Oxford lived there for a short time around 2010 and was granted permission to make several internal changes and a small extension.
Compiled by Lynda Raynor, with a great deal of help from Sally Roberts, Martin Strauss & Dimity Woodhall