The History of 19-22 Jesus Lane
In 1443 this site was leased for 80 years to Edmund Lavenham. At the time there was a garden with no buildings except a thatched barn.
In 1502 the College leased it to Peter Cayle for 99 years. The sites of the houses on the street frontage were not included in the lease. Cayle’s children died and the land came back to the College.
In 1539 the site was in the hands of Lambton Luke (joiner) but by 1540/1 it was taken on a 40 year lease by Knolles (or Knoles).
In 1548/9 Knoles assigned his lease to another.
By 1553 there was a large house on the site known as Knowles’ Tenement and the site was acquired by Alderman Thomas Kymbold to whom the College granted a new lease for the joint lives of himself and his wife Margery. The ‘Mansion House’ fronted the street and still had the thatched barn behind.
In 1595 when his parents had died a new lease was granted to Thomas Kymbold the younger.
In 1609 it was renewed to his widow Grace Baker, who was living there with her second husband.
In 1634 a new lease was granted to Reuben Fitches (cook). In 1649 Bryan Kitchingham (gentleman), who had bought the freehold house next door from Mrs Baker, bought the lease of Knowles’ tenement and came to live in the 'Mansion House'.
He pulled down the house on the freehold site and laid out a garden and orchard and built a malting house partly on his ground and partly on College land (without the College realising possibly due to the upheavals of the Commonwealth).
He bequeathed his freehold land to his son Robert (clergyman) who sold it to Alexander Parker.
The College leasehold was bought by Anthony Digby (clothier) who also bought the freehold portion of the site from Parker’s widow a few years later.
In 1698 Anthony Digby, who had built a small house on his freehold site, sold his leasehold interest to John Harwood (woollen draper).
The lease was renewed in 1712 and by the next renewal in 1727 the big house had been divided into three. The property was acquired by Elizabeth Cawthorne who allowed the premises to become much decayed before she applied to renew the lease in 1769. In addition there were 5 stables and a chaise house (the former malt house).
In 1796 John Haggerston (tenant of the Manor House) had acquired the lease. One of the houses had become a public house called the Air Balloon (the name commemorating the experiment performed by one of its Fellows, Edward Daniel Clarke).
The stables had been converted into a malting occupied by Haggerston himself.
Shortly after this Haggerston alienated his lease to Richard Foster (brewer) under whose care the malting increased in value.
The public house was now known as the Hare and Hounds and was let to an undertenant.
Not until 1860s that any rebuilding took place.
