Travel – Page 2 – I Walk Alone

London’s burning

We had one full day in London, 4 May, and we planned to make the most of it. I had an overambitious list of things to see. We’d obviously never get through half of them, but we set out full of hope and tiny tingles of excitement. Our first train of the day would take us on the District line to Monument. After that, I planned to walk as much as possible and avoid the underground. On the way to Putney Bridge station, I stopped to look at the bookshop I’d noticed the day before. Never has a bookshop looked so packed or so inviting. The only thing stopping me from filling my bag with all the tomes I spotted was the thought of lugging them around London all day. If I’d gone inside, I may never have left.

A birthday treat and signal failure

For my birthday this year, Commando decided to take me on a mini break to London, and I came up with a list of interesting, non-touristy things to see. To avoid the rush hour traffic, he thought it would be a good idea to catch the train from our local station. They only run once an hour, but it gave us time to have a coffee in the local coffee emporium near Southampton Central Station before our London train arrived. We strolled down the road to the station with our overnight bags over our shoulders, feeling as if we were on an adventure. There was a train on the platform, so we hastily bought our tickets from the automatic ticket machine and ran across the bridge. It looked as if we’d timed it perfectly.

A short walk on a big hill

On 18 April, Commando decided he wanted to visit Portsdown Hill for some strange reason. In his youth, he said, he used to ride out there on his motorbike all the time. He was surprised to discover I’d never been there because he used to go with all his mates from the pub where we first met. He talked about a pub they used to go to and how there was a car park with a burger van where they’d sit and look at the lights of Portsmouth. It sounded quite nice, and I was a little miffed that I’d never been invited along.

The Southampton Tram Project

When we strolled across an eerily beautiful and somewhat misty Common in early October 2021, I had no idea that Commando had another bit of time travel up his sleeve to surprise me. As far as I was concerned, it was just another ordinary Saturday morning watching parkrun and having a wander in the Old Cemetery. My head, as usual, was full of the book I was plotting, listening to the voices of my characters clamouring for attention. The fifth book in the series revolved around a tram driver and his conductor friend. The first draft was written, but despite extensive research about Southampton trams, I’d never actually been on one. The last Southampton tram ran on 31 December 1949, more than ten years before I was born.

Its all in the name, Hailey

Time was always going to be against us on our whistle stop tour of Witney but we packed a lot into our one afternoon. The one thing we hadn’t managed to do was visit Hailey, the place where my great great grandmother, Mary Ann Beechey, My great grandfather Elijah Haley and my grandfather’s brother Harold were born. It is also the place that gave us our family name, Haley. The spelling may have changed over the years, although many of the old records are spelt Hailey, like the place, but this really was where my family story began. Commando had a trick up his sleeve though. As Hailey was less than four miles from our hotel, he decided to make a little detour on our homeward journey. I was unreasonably excited when I saw the sign saying we were entering Hailey but traffic meant we couldn’t stop for a photo. Undaunted, I whipped out my phone and took a rather blurred and wobbly picture through the windscreen. It would serve as proof that we had actually been there.

Church Green and the Leys

More by luck than judgement, we found ourselves back where we started. There was a little assistance from Google Maps in there somewhere too but the sun shining on my phone screen didn’t help matters. By now it was almost four O’clock, and apart from our short lunch break, we’d been walking since midday. As several of the Witney locals were lounging about on the grass in the sun, we decided to rest our weary feet and join them. This also gave me the chance to peruse my list of family members. Thomas Haley, my great great great grandfather had lived on Church Green.

The River Windrush and a surprise blanket factory

It was late afternoon when we left Crawley Road and headed down the footpath I’d spotted on the map. I wasn’t entirely confident that I knew where I was going but I was keeping quiet about that fact. We passed a row of picture postcard cottages. There was a grassy field to our left and the track was wide and mostly paved. It must lead somewhere, even if that somewhere was not where we wanted to go. I hoped where it led was not a wild goose chase because we’d been walking more or less constantly for several hours at this stage and Commando might like to run marathons, but he’s not so keen on walking them.

Holy Trinity Church Witney and a missing house

The first thing we noticed about the Holy Trinity Church at the top of Narrow Hill, was the shut door. It had been a short but steep walk from the house where my great great grandfather Thomas Haley lived with his family. The land for the church was gifted by the Bishop of Winchester and the Duke of Marlborough in the 1840’s and the church was built between 1848 and 1849 by architect Benjamin Ferrey of Christchurch. After our earlier good fortune at St Mary’s, the shut door was a slight disappointment.

In search of Narrow Hill

We left The Angel Inn refreshed and eager to see as much of Witney as we could in the short time we had. We’d seen the houses of Corn Street where Alice was born and we’d seen the church where several of my ancestors were baptised, married and buried, even if we hadn’t found any graves. I knew that my great great grandfather, Thomas Haley junior had moved from Corn Street to Woodgreen by 1861, but the only address on the census was Private House. Ten years on, he’d moved to West End but there was no address I could trace. By 1881 though, he was living on Narrow Hill and, due to a stroke of luck, I knew exactly which house he’d lived in. After a quick stop to take a closer look at the Town Hall, we set off to find it.

St Mary’s church Witney, an angel and a cursed stool

They say there has been a church in Witney since the tenth century but St Mary’s, standing at the far end of a long, wide expanse of grass called Church Green, is not the original church. In fact it was built in the twelfth century on the site of previous Norman and Saxon churches. It has also undergone many changes over the years. The tall spire, rising one hundred and fifty six feet into the blue sky, was added in the fifteenth century. It dominates the Witney skyline, so it was hard to miss, even for strangers like us. Such a large and imposing church shows that Witney was a wealthy and important town in medieval times. This was where many of my Oxfordshire ancestors were baptised, married and buried. As we walked towards the church I was hopeful that I might be able to find some Haley graves.

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