Oxford Knitwear Wj Castle (Butchers)

House, dating from the 15th or early 16th century. The building is timber-framed with pebble dash rendering, a Cotswold stone roof, and a brick chimney on the left side. It has a complex U-shaped front elevation. It is two storeys high, with three gables to the front, two of which have original carved bargeboards. There are three oriel bays on the first floor, featuring timber mullion and transom windows with a 1:4:1 light arrangement. A shop front has been inserted with an ashlar base and a lean-to Cotswold stone roof. A pair of early to mid-19th century glazing-bar sashes are on the left side.

Inside, there are two moulded posts supporting a former jetty bressumer. The East room, at the end of a rear extension, is panelled, with a Tudor-arched fireplace featuring an arcaded oak mantel in a Jacobean style, and two moulded cross beams. An L-shaped timber-framed rear wing, two storeys high, has coved eaves and a five-light wooden window with arched heads. This wing continues in stone with matching coved eaves, incorporating a 15th-century trefoil-headed window, a blocked doorway with a dripstone, and a carved saddle stone at the East end. The East gable is partly rendered, with a steep Tudor-arched window on the first floor (containing a pair of 19th-century sashes), and four-light hollow chamfered mullion windows with stilted drips to the ground floor.

A gable at the rear of the main wing is of coursed and squared rubble and has a two-light oak mullioned window. A two-storey South-East wing, partially timber-framed, adjoins the rear, with two windows on the first floor (some with 18th-century leading) and three windows on the ground floor with ashlar mullions; the centre section has Yorkshire sashes. A further three-bay extension leads East, followed by a single-storey and then a one-and-a-half-storey wing in the yard. A 20th-century covered gantry connects the two wings. A Tudor-arched fireplace is in the two-storey portion of the South-East wing.

The rear room of Oxford Knitwear contains substantial reused timber and 16th and 17th century graffiti on a post. Architectural details are further described in Perspectives in Urban History by M Laithwaite.