Portwell House HotelOriginally part of the Crown Hotel but now a separate Hotel and restaurant.
In the 19C it housed Faringdon’s Post Office and Telegraph House. To indicate to the various stage coaches that there was mail to collect, there was, on the corner of the building, a tall post with 3 different coloured semaphore type arms attached to the top. This was operated by wires from inside the Post Office.
In the late 1880’s business increased and the authorities ordered the postmaster to increase the size of the office. This he refused to do, as it meant giving up more of his living space, so the powers that be looked for another site and the Post Office in Marlborough St was the result.
Ed note: Portwell Wine bar, in cellar rooms beneath the Hotel, opened in 2004
Northern End of Portwell House
Until the
1920’s this was the Angell Inn. The last ‘mine host’ was a woman
who helped supplement her income by selling pigs’ trotters, pies and mushy
peas in a shop at the end of the building. This lean-to shop, which was very
busy on market days, is now gone.
Camden House
A late 19C town house built for Mr
Ann’s growing family, which on completion he let out for a year to his
doctor ‘to get all the damp out so that he and his family would not get a
chill from a new house’.
It was later made into 2 flats, but in the
1950s it became the home of Faringdon Rural and District Council.
More
recently it was a private Old People’s Residential Home and now it has
reverted to a private house.
Church View
A tall narrow,
private house dating probably from early 19C