East Cottage and the house next door, Nuneham View (now 73 Foxborough Road), were built in 1875 on plots of about half an acre near Radley Station on land owned by Sir George Bowyer (1810-1883). Ever keen to raise money, Sir George had offered for sale some 30 plots of his land near the station on long leases, but only this one pair of semi-detached houses was built at this time.

The bungalows nearby were not built until the 1930s. The name ‘Foxborough Road’ did not appear until 1938/1939 as part of a major road renaming scheme in Radley by Abingdon Rural District Council. Before that, the road was simply referred to locally as ‘The Lane’.

Sir George retained a freehold interest in the pair of semis but let them both on a 500-year lease starting in 1875, with a ground rent of £10 per year. When Mrs Josephine Dockar Drysdale bought most of the Bowyer estate in 1889, she acquired the freehold interest in the two houses. At that time, Nuneham View was leased to a farmer, George Badcock, and East Cottage to Dr Edwin Monk, a former Precentor (Director of Music) at Radley College (the organ at Radley Church is dedicated to his memory).

When Dr Monk died in 1900, Mrs Dockar Drydale bought the residue of his 500-year lease and let East Cottage on a series of shorter three-year tenancies. The last one in 1918 was to a master at Radley College, Arthur Wilson-Green. Shortly before her death in 1921, Josephine sold her leasehold interest in East Cottage to Alfred Kenneth Boyd, another Radley College master, who lived there for most of the rest of the decade. It is not known whether Boyd sold East Cottage when he moved with his wife to live at Radley College or rented it out.

The next occupants of East Cottage, as listed on the electoral register for 1930, were the MacPhails who renamed the property ‘East End House’. This name was retained by the next occupants, the Hutchins family, who were recorded as living there in the 1935 electoral register and on the wartime 1939 Register. Their daughter, Olive, gave East End House as her address when she married Francis Wickson at Radley Church in September 1942 (even though it was by then officially 75 Foxborough Road). An interviewee in the Radley History Club’s Radley Remembered series of oral history recordings, who lived at 89 Foxborough Road, remembers ‘Wings for Victory’ weeks [held March to September 1943] during the war run from the music room in East End House by Mrs Hutchins. Was the ‘music room’ perhaps a legacy of a previous resident, Dr Edwin Monk?

The other half of the pair of semi-detached houses, Nuneham View/73 Foxborough Road was divided into three flats in the early 1960s. It is not known exactly when East Cottage/East End House/75 Foxborough Road was also split into three flats, but it was before 1980. At some point before 1980, a block of garages with a flat above was added at the same time to the back of both properties. In the early 1990s, a large bungalow was built at the rear of the large back garden of 75 Foxborough Road.