History of the Lye Valley
Left: This extract from a Corpus Christi College map of Headington dated 1605 shows “Leye Hill”,and also “Ley bushe” can be seen adjoining part of Cowley. Two poles and twenty perches of land belonging to Corpus and rented by Walter Welles cutting through the middle of Lye Hill is marked in red
This 1777 Christ Church map of Cowley
shows Lye Hill (now spelt as it is today) to the north-west of Bullingdon Green
On 16 June 1883 Jackson's Oxford Journal reported on the possibility of building a fever hospital on Lye Hill, described as being about a quarter of a mile from the Barracks and about three or four acres in extent, and that the footpath through it would have had to be closed, but in the end Cold Harbour was chosen. A year later on 7 June 1884 it reported on the possibility of buying 32 acres of land on Lye Hill from Christ Church for a cemetery, but Rose Hill was chosen.
Photographs of the Lye Valley area in 1914
Description of the Lye Valley in 1915 by Henry Taunt
Historic aerial views of the Lye Valley on the “Britain from Above” website
These show the development of the adjacent housing estate, including Bulan and Dene Roads and the one simply called Lye Valley;
- New housing at Bulan Road and the 43rd Regimental Barracks, Headington, from the north-west (1928)
The north fen area is clear, the south fen is just cut off on the right-hand side. The cottages at the head of the valley can be discerned at the left-hand end. - Southfield Golf Course, Churchill Hospital, and Lye Valley (1953)
- The Cowley Motor Works and the Lye Valley area (1953)
By the 1960s the Lye Valley was used by builders as a dump.
Memories of the Lye Valley
Late 1930s
Richard Brown, who was born at 7 Dene Road in 1933 and lived there until 1940, describes playing in the Lye Valley
1960s/1970s
Richie Hewer, who was born on the Town Furze estate in the early 1960s, describes the Lye Valley when it was both a children's playground and a rubbish dump, and how it is still a magical place for him now it has been transformed
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Inversnaid”