The Glen (the name dates back to the 20th century only) is a semi-detached two story cottage substantially constructed of Cotswold stone on the Eastleach Road, and adjoins the northern end of the house now known as The Old Post Office. (The Glen is to the right of the building in the photo above).
The original part of the building, facing the road and now consisting of a living room below and a bedroom above, was probably constructed in the 17th century. At some time before 1926 a one story extension was added at the back of the house. The house was then extended significantly in about 1996 so as to include: downstairs, an office/conservatory, a cloak room and a dining/kitchen room and, upstairs, a bathroom and two further bedrooms. There is a north facing garden.
It is likely that the earliest inhabitants of the cottage were farm labourers and their families.
The first names we have are those of Edward and Sarah Clinton and their children, Edward and Mary, who, according to Muriel Howarth, lived in the house before 1740.
The first reliable reference to the cottage is its appearance on the map of Southrop, dated 1752, now in the Village Hall.
Like much of the village the house was owned by Wadham College, Oxford, until 1926. And, if it existed then, it may well have been part of Dorothy Wadham’s endowment to the college in 1612.
Leases from the first half of the nineteenth century show that in September 1800 Joseph Hains took over the tenancy from Thomas Savory. Joseph lived in the cottage with his wife, Sarah, and son, or possibly nephew Benjamin. Joseph died in 1819 after which Sarah and Benjamin continued to live in the house. Sarah had probably died by 1835 when Benjamin took over the lease. He is described as of ‘of Arlington’ and as a yeoman. Arlington, near Bibury, is about six miles west of Southrop. ‘Yeoman’ suggests that he was a farmer and landowner rather than a farm labourer, so he appears to have come up in the world. However, he was not an educated man since he signed documents with his mark: a clear indication that he was illiterate.
In 1844 Benjamin sold the lease of the cottage to Elijah Lawrence, a draper from Marlborough. It is not known whether Elijah ever lived in the house, it is perhaps more likely that he sub-let it.
Information as to who lived in the cottage in the latter half of the nineteenth century is sparse. James Hunt, aged 31, and his wife and three children may have been living in the house at the time of the 1871 census. The family had moved from Lechlade. In 1881 the inhabitants were John Stone, aged 39, his wife, Hannah, and their five sons and one daughter: not a large family for the time and presumably five people slept where there is now a single bedroom. By 1891 John was dead and Hannah was occupying the cottage with four of her children.
As to the early twentieth century: in 1901 William Stone (perhaps John’s brother), aged 62, and his grown up daughter, Mary, aged 38, were living in the house; and from 1915 to 1922, a Mr. and Mrs. Moulden and their family.
The cottage (still without a name) was included in the 1926 auction of the properties in the village owned by Wadham College. As lot 18 it is described in the auction catalogue as having a living room, pantry, two bedrooms, wash house, outside earth closet, shed, well and pig sty. (Cottage pig keeping was wide-spread from the late eighteenth century, but was in decline by the 1930s and had more or less disappeared after the end of the 1939-45 war). The sitting tenant was George Cyphus.
According to Richard Sykes, who still lives in the village, Edward Cox, a postman in Lechlade, acquired the house in 1926, and it was then occupied by Richard Cox and his wife (grandparents of Richard Sykes). Richard Cox, originally from Edgworth, was a carter on the Southrop estate and his wife (whose maiden name was Bartlett) a farmer’s daughter from Little Rissington. From 1946 their son, Fred Cox (born in 1912) lived in the cottage with his wife Nellie (born in 1917) who was from Coventry, and whom he had married that year. Fred Cox was a lorry driver for Hintons, the seed merchants based in the village, and was a church warden and chairman of the parish council. He died on Good Friday 1989 and Nellie died in 1996. They are buried together in the village church yard, St. Peter’s. They did not have any children.