The Old Post Office

 Parts of this house date back to the 14th century and it has been added to and adapted many times since then. It was part of the Wadham College estate and may have been The Crown Inn at one point. However, by 1817 the house was occupied by Stephen Lawrence and referred to as ‘house and shop called Grace Court Penn’. This indicates that it was part of the medieval estate of Greys Court. 

In 1871 it was a grocers shop run by Obadiah Newman and his wife Harriet. Also living in the house were their children Mary and George, and Obadiah’s widowed sister Amelia Smith. Obadiah was the postman who collected the mail for the village from Lechlade every day. When he died in 1891, at the age of 49, Harriet carried on running the shop with her daughter Mary. It became a sub post office in about 1895. Harriet Newman died in 1907 and Mary continued running the shop on her own. 

In 1910 Mary Newman married Frank Telling who ran the village shop in Eastleach; they continued to run both shops until 1912 when Frank’s brother, William Telling, took over the running of the Southrop shop and Post Office with his wife Alice. William and Alice already had five children: Violet (b.1902), Florence (b.1904), Horace (b.1906), Doris (b.1909) and Mabel (b.1910). Winifred was born in 1914 after they had moved to Southrop.

Florence never married and helped in the shop as did Winnie. Vi worked at Hintons but did the accounts for the shop. Horace died in 1929 in a boating acident on the Thames at Lechlade. Doris married Mr. Bowyer and went to live in London.The photo (above left) shows Winnie, Violet and Mabel Telling having tea in the garden with Mrs. Jefferies and her daughter, Joan, in about 1925. 

William’s brother, Frank, owned the shop and he let it to William for the rest of his life. In 1932 Violet married Jesse Monk from The Row and moved to Filkins. Reginald Head came as an apprentice butcher and continued to work on that side of the shop. 

In 1940 Winnie married Reg Head and he succeeded his father-in-law as Post Officer when William died in 1949. Florence (Flos) and Winnie continued to run the shop and Post Office together and the shop front was ‘modernised’ in 1950, and the photo below left shows it decorated for the coronation in 1953. 

In 1970 Winnie and Reg retired to Lechlade, and the shop was taken over by Ralph and Dee Harding and their daughter Lynne. 

The shop was still a butchers as well as a grocers and Post Office. The Hardings restored the house, uncovering beams and fireplaces and finding parts going back to the 14th century. 

From 1975 to 1978 the shop was owned and run by Joan and James Bainbridge and their daughter Hilary. Then in 1978 Fred and Sue Gilpin took over with their children, Alan and Nicola. The Gilpins struggled to make it pay and eventually closed the shop in 1981. They continued to live in the house which was known as ‘Shopaswas. 

In 1982 a Community Shop was started by volunteers in the Village Hall. 

The Gilpins moved to Fairford in 1989 and the house was bought by Michael Hinton and he sold it on to Colin Medley and Sarah King in 1991. They renamed it ‘The Old Post Office’ and rebuilt the shop front as a bay window. The village post box is still in use in the front wall of the house.