Witney – I Walk Alone

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.

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.

Before the beginning

My Grandfather, Thomas John Haley, the man who inspired my novel, Plagued, was born in Witney, Oxfordshire on 27 October 1887. It was the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. His father, Elijah, was born in 1862, in Hailey, just outside Witney, and was a woollen blanket weaver. His mother, Esther Brodrick, was born in Filkins, about 9 miles away, in 1865. Thomas was their first child. I knew all this from research into my family tree, and I’d heard Pappy talk about Witney, but I’d never been there. So, on 26 September 2021, with the book in the process of being published, Commando and I went on a little trip into the past. It felt like a trip I should have made long ago.

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