There has been a minor flood in one of the archive stores at Brasenose College, Oxford. All seems to be well now, but sorting it all out has been the main preoccupation of the part-time Archivist. Nevertheless, just before Christmas she did reply to my query about the College buying Brasenose, Stamford and its mediaeval door knocker in 1890.No, she doesn’t think it likely that Bishop Edward King played a role. The house wasn’t sold by his acquaintance Mrs Johnson, and the advertised particulars for the auction make something of the door knocker and its association with the College, so the Archivist assumes that the College heard of the sale by this more prosaic route.
What of Mrs Johnson? She did not own the house - it was sold by Thomas Tertius Paget of Humberston, Leicestershire. She probably had been Paget’s tenant - the particulars indicate the property was available for immediate occupation and College’s Agent at the time mentions a local Estate Agent called Johnson as being ‘a son of the late occupier’.
Meanwhile, although all the roads were clear to drive along through the snow and bad weather before and after Christmas, our greatest challenge was getting out of our drive (as pictured) on Boxing Day.
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