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Tuesday 2pm - 5pm Wednesday 2pm - 5pm Thursday 2pm - 5pm Friday 2pm - 5pm Saturday 2pm - 5pm Sunday 2pm - 5pm

Burford Tolsey Museum

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Burford Tolsey Museum

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The Burford Tolsey Museum is housed in the historic Tolsey building in Burford.

The museum contains fascinating evidence from the long, and sometimes colourful, history of Burford.

17/10/2026

Weekend Wonder - The Kitchen from the Burford Doll's House

The kitchen was the active heart of the house, with the cook working at the table making pastry, the dairyman with his traditional smock delivering pails of milk attached to the yoke over his shoulders, the maid with her mop and the housekeeper in attendance.

If you look closely, on the wall at the back of the kitchen, you can see the wheel that turns the spit. Above the fireplace is the wooden rack which holds the spit rods. One of these was connected to the ropes; a small dog was placed in the wheel (like a hamster wheel) to turn the spit in front of the open fire, slowly rotating the meat for even cooking.

The spit is based on one that used to be in the kitchen at Chastleton House. The oak dresser, with open shelves above 4 drawers and a pot shelf below, displays traditional pewter plates and earthenware pots and bowls. Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie made the pottery, trained with Bernard Leach, and founded the Cole Pottery, Coleshill.

Extract from ‘Souvenir Guide to Burford Dolls House’ by Susan Ashton, available from www.burfordtolsey.org/shop or from the Tolsey Museum.

10/10/2026

Weekend Wonder - Riverside House

Riverside House is a late 18th-century Cotswold townhouse built in two parts to the front, probably by Edward Ansell, a local tanner. The left side, with its angled bay, has three stories, and the right has two.

An early 17th-century neighbouring gabled dwelling on the house's riverside was demolished in the late 1860s to make way for the present gated entrance to a new Gothic extension at the back, where 17th-century buildings also survive.

The cobbled archway to the right and its adjacent cottage were once part of an inn called the King's Arms, and the new building may have encroached on it.

07/10/2026

Midweek Masterpieces - Chimney Steps

Looking a bit like the beaks of North American Loons, these cranked irons were found when a chimney was demolished nearly 50 years ago on the premises of the old ironmongers, H A Hollis & Son, formerly Charles East, and before that, Hemming & Co, and now the Co-Op.

The pointed ends were driven into the chimney walls, leaving the two-inch cranked pieces to act as steps for climbing boys!

When Charles Kingsley published his novel, The Water Babies, in 1863, he highlighted the inhuman practice of London chimney sweeps, who sent children up chimneys to dislodge soot. Many of these, necessarily small boys and girls as young as six years of age, suffered illness and death through exposure to carcinogens, and often experienced injury or stunted and deformed growth from crawling through cramped flues, some only 7 inches wide. A number of Acts of Parliament from 1840 onwards attempted to stop child labour in general, and several Chimney Sweepers Regulation Acts addressed the plight of climbing boys in particular.

03/10/2026

Weekend Wonder - The Tolsey Clock

For almost 150 years, the clock on the Tolsey has told the time up and down Burford's High Street, and its circular white faces are translucent, so light from within displays the time. A photo from 1860 shows that an earlier clock existed, with a single lozenge-shaped face set flat against the other gable, along with a bell.

Around 1872, local ironmonger Cilo East charged £16 to supply a copper casing for the newer clock faces, complete with a small chimney as gas from the Town’s own supply was to be used for illumination.

A weight-driven clock was housed within the roof space, and one of the local clockmakers was paid to keep it wound and maintained.

In 1910, the Burford Electric Co. offered to light the clock-faces free of charge if the Council would install electric light in the Tolsey.

Eventually, an electric mechanism replaced the manually wound clock, and early in the 21st century a striking facility was installed, bringing the bell to life once more, ringing throughout the day but still silent at night.

A similar bell, cast by Henry Bond, the local bell-founder, in 1892, used to hang at the back of the Tolsey, where it could be rung to summon the crew for the fire engine, which was housed here until the 1950s, when the building was restored to provide a home for the Council Chamber and the Tolsey Museum, where this bell can now be seen.

Henry’s younger son, Thomas Arthur Bond, cast the current bell in 1932.

26/09/2026

Weekend Wonder - The Bedroom from the Burford Doll's House

The bedroom has a plasterwork ceiling, and the wallpaper is copied from one at Coleshill House, near Farringdon. The lady of the house is putting on her bonnet in front of the looking glass, while the nursemade cradles the baby.

The washstand has a bowl and towels hanging over the rail by the fire. A wooden rocking cradle holds the baby. The four poster bed is based on one at Chastleton House. It is hung with silk curtains and has a mattress, pillows, sheets, and a quilted coverlet, all beautifully handmade by members of the Burford Women's Institute. The tall boy wardrobe is oak-panelled with bracketed feet and two drawers; this is based on a similar one at Chastleton House.

(Extract from ‘Souvenir Guide to Burford Dolls House’ by Susan Ashton, available from www.burfordtolsey.org/shop or the Museum)

23/09/2026

Midweek Masterpieces - Weights & Measures

The Burford Tolsey Museum collection includes several examples of weights and measures. Charles East was Burford’s local inspector of weights and measures, and we have some of the various scales and measures which he used in this work.

We also have a small 18th-century steelyard, about 10 inches (260 mm) long, which a charity at Milton-under-Wychwood used to weigh meat allocations.

20/09/2026

Weekend Wonder - The George Inn

The image shows the three gables of The George, once Burford's premier Inn. It was in business in the 15th century and probably earlier. The uphill third was added in 1608, standing on land that was part of the Church Estate. The arch led to its yard, which opened into Lavington Lane, leading into Sheep Street. The inn closed in 1800, when its rival, Mr Stevens, bought it; he ran The Bull opposite.

12/09/2026

Weekend Wonders - Items from the Forest Fair (c.1856)

The original Forest of Wychwood Fair is represented in the Tolsey Museum by these three items, all dating from 1856 or before. The only obvious souvenir is the small porcelain tankard, but Roger Warner was told that the plaster Dolphin ‘Fairing’ was bought there as a present. Evidently cherished, it has survived remarkably well; the chalky surface being porous and prone to being chipped.

The porcelain teapot belonged to Carrie Faulkner of Asthall, whose mother had bought it at the Forest Fair, and again it was lovingly kept as a memento even after it had become cracked and lidless.

The history of the original Fair is given on the website for the Wychwood Project and is largely based on John Kibble’s Historical and Other Notes on Wychwood Forest (1928).
Briefly, it all started in 1796 when three leading Methodists asked their friends to join them in a picnic on Newell Plain, then an extra-parochial area of The Forest near Charlbury, to avoid the bustle of Witney Feast. The event gained great popularity in subsequent years, and was soon exploited by stallholders providing refreshments and entertainment.

In 1830 The Deputy Ranger of the Forest failed in his attempt to ban future Fairs, and at its height, and 15 - 20,000 persons attended, including the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Churchill the Forest Ranger, and other local gentry. Special trains were put on from Oxford and Worcester in September 1855.

The Disafforestation Act of 1853 ended the application of Forest Law, and Newell Plain was then transferred into the ownership of Lord Churchill. The last old Forest Fair which had become a lawless nuisance, was held in 1856.

09/09/2026

Midweek Masterpiece - The Music Room from the Burford Doll's House

The Burford Doll's House Music Room was constructed after the Second World War and was added to the doll's house as a new wing in the 1950s. F Russell Cox designed it, and Frank Early of Fulbrook built and fitted it. It shows a group of chamber musicians playing various instruments, including a chamber organ exquisitely constructed by J Howard Leach, modelled on similar instruments made by Samuel Green in about 1790.

Extract from ‘Souvenir Guide to Burford Dolls House’ by Susan Ashton, available from the Museum or www.burfordtolsey.org/shop

05/09/2026

Weekend Wonders - Fire Marks

Although some have disappeared in recent years, five Burford properties still have fire marks, including a lead one from c. 1725, and the museum has two 19th-century examples. These are of thin stamped copper; the COUNTY mark from a house in Witney Street showing Britannia, and the rather battered NORTHERN example, was found in a garden wall in Fulbrook.

Insurance companies in London started the practice of using Fire Marks in the 17th century, to enable their own fire brigades to identify which property to save, with early marks even showing the individual policy number. This system soon spread to the provinces.

Eventually the community made its own provision; ‘At a meeting held at the Bull Inn in Burford 7th February 1797, for the purpose of applying to the inhabitants of the said Town for subscribing towards the purchase of a Fire Engine, it was resolved that the following Gentlemen* be appointed as a Committee for receiving the said subscriptions. It was also resolved that Mr Padbury [the clockmaker] be appointed Treasurer.

*John Lenthall Esq., Mr Huntley, The Rev. Mr Caswell, Mr Swancotte, Mr Street, Mr Padbury, Mr Turner, Mr Thos Ansell, Mr R Tuckwell, Mr Stratford, Mr Minchin, Mr J Tuckwell, Mr Bateman.

The subscription raised £84 1s 9d, with £57 from the town and the balance from surrounding villages, and 10 guineas from the Phoenix Fire Office. This amount covered the total cost of the engine (£42), carriage from London and equipment.

Subscribers could call for the engine to attend their property without expense, except for conveyance, and the committee charged non-subscribers what they deemed reasonable.
Mr Padbury had care of the Engine from 1801, and the Engine Men were to be paid out of the Church Rate, ‘by Order of the Vestry’.

Address

126 High Street
Burford
OX184QU

Opening Hours

Tuesday	2pm - 5pm
Wednesday	2pm - 5pm
Thursday	2pm - 5pm
Friday	2pm - 5pm
Saturday	2pm - 5pm
Sunday	2pm - 5pm

Website

https://www.burfordtolsey.org/

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