The house as we see it now faces south west and consists of a main range of three storeys, with two short wings at the rear, the eastern one having a long two storey range extending to the north eest. The front range was apparently built in the Georgian period and the architecture suggests a date after 1780. The 1841 Tithe Apportionment map(1) shows that by that time the house had acquired the two short wings at the rear. They have lean-to roofs, the space between them has now been filled in. The cornice at the top of the front elevation of the ho11se and the plat hand running across the face jus~ below the first floor windows are both carried on round the sides and on to the rear of the front range(7) this indicates that these two wings were built after the main range. The straight joints in the stonework where thl~ wings abut against. the front range give further support for this dating. Later still came the longer building which now extends the eastern wing, added perhaps for the school which occupied the house from the 1850 to 1870. There was no building in that position in 1841. The fact that this extension is more recent than the wing to which j.t is attached is shown by the position of the quoins next to the 'straight joint in the stonework between the wing and the extension. These quoins are on the wing Bide o'f the joint, on the earlier part of the building. The joint, too. is aligned with the exterior of the north wall of the wing, agagin showing the wing came first -one cannot nave a detached extension here with no south end wall.
The name Potticks occurs in various forms in the archives, referring to the house or its surroundings. Pot ticks House was so calleed in the 1851 census(2), but is not named in that of 1841, perhaps because it may have been unoccupied then. At that time however, two pastures nearby were called Pothookes.
In 1805 an entry in the South Wraxall parish registers(3) records the death of Mr.Samuel Raynor of Pothokes. Clearly at least part of the house must have been built by that time. Again, when Mr.William Miles married Margaret Reynolds in 1779(4), he endowed her, among other property, with 'two pieces of pasture called Puddocks...near Thrankley otherwise Frankley'. The wording of this shows that there was then no building on Puddocks. A similar variant of the name is on ,the 1743 map(5) entitled "Five Miles Round Bath", where the Old Quaker House is marked Paddocks. Potticks does not appear on Andrews & Dury's map of 1773; only the Quakers Meeting House is there(6).
There are also a couple of references to personal names which may be related to Pot ticks. The book 'The Place Names of Wiltshire'(7) suggests a connexion with a Ralph Poteck, mentioned in a Lay Subsidy Roll in 1523. He must have been a prosperous man to appear in the Subsidy list, and may have had land around Pot ticks -but there is no evidence for or , against that. Finally, in the Shaftesbury Abbey accounts for Brad ford in 1372(8) when Joan Formage was Abbess, we read of John Puttock paying 2s. rent for two shops newly erected in Bradford, probably near the market place.
Potticks -the History
More is known about Samuel Raynor than about most of the earlier residents at Pot ticks House. For this reason and also because a descendant of his was still living there in 19399, this history begins with his life. He was born around 1745, probably not in Bradford, but evidently played quite a prominent part in the life of the town in his lateryears. Between 1775 and 1788 his name is often found among those signing the minutes of the parish vestry meetings(10), particularly in connexion with the care for the poor. A visit from John Wesley in March 1784 shows a wider aspect of his friendships. Wesley wrote in his Diary(11) "Friday 12th, being at Samuel Raynor's in Bradford (town), I was convinced of two vulgar errors; the one, that nightingales will not live in cages; the other, that they only sing a month or two in the year. He has now three nightingales in cages, and they sing almost all day long, from November to August".
Then in 1788, the parish accounts(12), on the expenditure side record "By Mr.Raynor for a carper to cover the floor of the communion Table £1.9s.-.
From that year, too, there survives a Copy of Court Roll of the Bradford Prebendal Manor13, recording "the surrender by Thomas Bush of Bradford, clothier, and Samuel Raynor of Bradford, gent, "of a cottage. .in Bradford ( in fact it was near Elms Cross) and various other properties whose leases had run out. A renewed lease was to be granted to Bush, and Raynor, who signed the grant on behalf of the Workhouse Trust. From 1789 to 1799, Raynor was paying an annual poor rate for Stock. This often means a clothier's or onnkeeper's stock. Raynor is not known to have been a clothier -he is always called 'gent'7 there is however a hint that he may have had business links with Edward Baber, his future father-in-law. He married Ann Baber in 1792 and their five children were baptised at Holy Trinity Church, Bradford even those born after they had moved up to potticks(14).
Over the years, Raynor had been building up a modest estate near Frankley, besides owning many houses in the town(15). Some of this Frankley land came from an estate which in the 17506 had belonged to Edward Burcombe. Though Burcombe was a surveyor we cannot find the exact whereabouts of his land. His son Richard and grandson Edward later shared the land between them, and in a deed of 1778(4), the property which Mr William Miles settled on his wife-to-be included the two acress of pasture ground -no signs of a house there yet called Puddocks ...flat Frankley, formerly part of.. Great Ashley Farm, late in the tenure of Richard Burcombe.. father of Edward Burcombe the younger, and now sometime purchased by William Miles of Edward Burcombe". The next developments are rather confusing. According to the rate books, the Burcombes seem still to have held land rated at 3d until around 1782, but by 1787 Miles had property, 'part of Burcombe's' , rated at 4d. But according to the Land Tax records(16) for 1773, William Miles was already paying 10s of that tax for Burcombe's that year and the tax had risen to 13s 4d by 1780. It was not unusual for the poor rate to take several years to catch up with property sales, but this is ridiculous. The above 1d increase in the Church Rate could be due to some building work but is not enough even for the front range of Potticks. Miles also had another property in the tithing, rated at l 1/4d, previously belonging to Abraham Hanny, but when in 1792 Samuel Raynor purchased 'late Burcombe's' from him, Miles kept 'late Hanny's' and his other property (e.g. the Old Bear in Bradford) for the next ten years and more.
Raynor also purchased an estate which had belonged to a Mr. Cottle. On the latter's death in 1772.. the entire Cottle estate, assessed at 2s 5 1/2d for Church Rates(4d) in that year, was split in the next year. Anthony Guy of Chippenham bought land rated at 1s 8d and Thomas Baskerville of Woolley Grange the other 9d part. Then in 1776 Guy sold 1d worth of his share to Samuel Raynor. The rating on Guy's remaining part was raised to 1s 9d in 1784, which suggests that Guy or his tenant John Byfield had built a 1 1/2d house there. Again, this would not suffice for a house like the front range of Potticks house. The tax records indicate that Guy paid the 1s.9d poor rate until 1790, but that in the next year his widow sold the estate, 1s 5d of the rate then being paid by Thomas Bush, whose tenant was Cornelius Byfield, 2d by Daniel Clutterbuck of Leigh Park, and the remaining 2d by Samuel Raynor. It may be noted that in 1808 one of the five cottages west of Potticks House was occupied by the Byfield family. (There is at the P.R.O. the will of an Anthony Guy, proved in 1781, but, even if it refers to the same man, that is too early to shed light on these transactions] . This completes Samuel Raynor's purchases in the Leigh and Woolley tithing. As Raynor married Ann Baber in 1792, the year these purchases were completed, one may surmise that the prospective marrioge had provided him with the necessary resources for them.
For the rest of Raynor's life his assessments for the Land Tax.. the Poor Rate and the Church Rate (the last two equalling each other) did not change; they remained:

Mr Samuel Raynor for part of Miles' 16s 4d,4d, 4d
do. self and others 8s 3d, 2d, 2d
do. for part of Guy's 8s, 2d, 2d.
The "self and others" description may refer to the five cottages later on the site of Hepburn House, but there is no indication of any house building by Raynor in this period. As he was recorded as 'of Pothookes' at his death in 1805, it seems certain that the front part of Potticks House had been built by then [but where was the original kitchen?]. One must also ask why the building work was not taken account of in the rating till 1808. Could the builder have been Miles or Guy (or perhaps Byfield as Guy's tenant) after all?
The Bradford poor rate books show that ownership of Potticks passed to his widow Ann Raynor, who still held it 1841 according to the Tithe Apportionment schedule. We have noted that the poor rate and church rate assessments, after remaining as quoted above intil June 1808, were both increased at a reassessment in September. The new rates(17) were
1) a House which she herself occupied, of rateable value 3 1/4d, on which she was assessed to pay poor rate at 16s.3d and for church rate at 4s.1d -for in that year the rates were 60 times and 10 times the rateable value respectively. This 3 1/4d house, quite a large one, must be Pot ticks House and its garden {numbered TA1895 in 'The Year of the Map').
2) land with rateable value 3d which she occupied -this was TA1896 on the Map.
3) five houses occupied by Wm.Hinton, Wm Hooper, Wm.Lucas, John Bishop and the executors of John Byfield. Together these 1/2d and 3/4d houses had a total rateable value of 3 1/4d and were TA 1894 on the Map.
Ann Raynor also had more land elsewhere in the tithing but , that does not concern us.
The poor rate and church rate books continue, with trequent gaps, until the 1840s, the entries for the Raynor property remaining the same apart from occasional changes in the tenants of the five houses. The few rate books later in the 1830s record that by 1833 the house was unoccupied -Mrs Raynor had moved back to her house in St.Margaret's Street,Bradford, and Joel Keable was farming the land at Potticks. In 1836 the tenant of both house and land was Richard Stiles; James Gerrish followed him in 1841. The latter year was the "Year of the Map", referring to the Tithe Apportionment {TA) schedule and map(1) of the whole of the then parish of Bradford. A photocopy of the part of the map around Pot ticks is attached. Every field and building in the parish is shown accurately, each with the TA number corresponding to its description in the schedule. The Potticks property, TA1894 to 1896 plus '1'A1901 still belonged to Mrs Ann Raynor, with Pottick.s House in TA legs. In the TA schedule these are
'rA Owner Occupier Description Acreage number. A. R. P
1894 Mr.S.A.Raynor James Howell and others 5 Houses 0. 2. 8
1895 " James Gerrish House & garden 0. 1. 13
1896 " Pothooks,pasture 2. 3. 32
1901 " 3. 3. 35
(omitting the details of the Rectorial and Vicarial Tithes)
It will be noticed that TA1897, the Old Quaker Meeting House, lying in the corner of TAI896, was not part of Ann Raynor's property, but owned by Thomas Wheeler, his tenant being Silas Goddard. Its history(18) was that from the mid 18th century, when Quakers ceased to meet there, this meeting house and graveyard were leased by their Wiltshire Quarterly Meeting to various tenants, and eventually sold (in March 1807) to Peter Wheeler of Bradford, Thomas' father. However, the present owner states that at some more recent date the Quaker House ~.as sold by the then owner of Potticks House, though the date when it was acquired is not known.
Mrs Raynor lived till 1854, when the house probably passed to her daughter Henriettar the wife of Jonn Ings Bath of South Wraxall. It is not mentioned in the Kelly's Directory(19) of 1848, probably being unoccupied. It was called Potticks House in the Bradford Borough section of the 1851 census return, occupied by Alfred Mansell, aged 24, schoolmaster, with his wife Clarissa and daughter Emma age 6 months, two sisters-in-law Alice and Jane Wilkins, with 16 scholars whose ages ranged from seven to fifteen. Their names and birthplaces are in the Appendix I. Silas Goddard was still living at the Old Quaker House. The directories of 1853 and 1859 confirm that Alfred H. Mansell had a "Gentleman's Boarding School" at Pottick's House 1 In the 1861 census, Mansell, now 33, a Classical and Mathematical \ Teacher, with his wife and six daughters, had 14 students at their school. Thomas P. Davis, 20, a farmer, was also living on the premises wuth his wife and daughter; the five cottages then housed three families. And where was there room for Mary Jones, from Carmarthen, who, with her sister Jane ran ("conducted") a boarding school for six girls, three of whom were sisters of one of the pupils at Mansell's Academy for boys? Was the Pot ticks House extension built for the girls?
The directories of 1867 and 1875 tell of a boarding school run by Lawrence Long at Frankleigh, and the 1871 census shows that this was in fact at Potticks. Long, aged 38, his wife Maria, four sons and four daughters, had ben pupils, ages 9 to 16, and two servants. If we assume that Long's own children attended his school, there would be around twenty children there. Does this match the number of coat pegs in the upstairs room of the house? The school had closed by 1881 and the owners were once again in residence. The census records the household as Elizabeth Bath, now a widow aged 87, describi!d as a retired farmer. with her daughter Henrietta (49), her son Henry (51, Royal Artillery, probably retired); also her granddaughter Annie L. Wills (22) probably the daughter of Ann Raynor Wills who was named. on Samuel Raynor's tomb in South Wraxall churchyard and died in 1879; aged 52); also two servants, one doubling as a groom. Their gardener George Guy had lived in one of the 'five houses' since Mansell's time or earlier. Henry Bath appears as head of the house in the 1889 Directory and in the 1891 census the occupiers were the two spinsters Mary E.Wills and her sister Annie L.Wills, Elizabeth Bath's granddaughters. They had two servants. The Wills family remained at Pottick's House for a long time. John Henry Wills lived there from 1899, dying in 1936. His widow was still there in 1940. Their successor in 1949 was Miss H.M.White:nowadays the name 'Po ticks' is applied both to Pctticks House on the road to Bathford and also to Haugh Potticks Farm which lies between Haugh and Ashley in the tithing of Winsley. I have not yet been able to find a link between these two properties, and a quick search in the Kelly's dIrectories seems to indicate that until 1924 Haugh Pot ticks Farm was one of several known as Hay Farm. It was owned then by Miss C.Bailey-Hamilton and by 1927 she had given it the name Haugh Pot ticks. , R.& B.Harvey Wiltshire Buildings Record February 2000.

References
[W.R.O. = Wiltshire and Swindom Record Office, Trowbridge. (L.S.= Local Studies Library, Trowbridge].
Copy of Bradford TA map attached
2. Census returns for 1841. 51,61,71 &. 91 on Fiche ar L.S.; Microfrlm of 1841 to 1881 at W.R.O. 3. South Wr3xall and Bradford parish registers at W.R.O.
4. W.R.O. ref, 212A/31/18
5. Photocopy of local part attaches, Copy at W.R.O.
6. Andrews & Dury map, 1773. Photocopy of part of 1814 edition attached
7. Gower. Mawer & Stenton, 'The Place-Narnes of Wiltshire' (Cambridge university Press, 1929) Lay Suhsidy Roll at P.R.O. , ref. E179/197/153
8. W.R.O. ref. 1742/6786
9. West Wiltshire Directory, 1939 at L.S.
10. Bradford Church Rate hooks 77/1 & 77/2 at W.R.O. Poor Rate books 77/218-222
11. John Wesley's Diary.
12. See .ref.10
13. WANHS Journal vol.XLI p.236,237
14. Bradford parish registers at W.R.O.
15. See ref.l0
16. Land Tax assessments: W.R.O. A1/345/49A,B,& C
17. Poor rate: W.R.O. 77/220
18 W.R.O. 847/39
19 Directories on fiche at W.R.O.