Great Haseley

A Memory of Great Haseley.

I was five when I moved to Great Haseley from Newington, near Stadhampton, with my mother, father and brother. The year was 1957 and Horse Close Cottages was a new housing estate - we were thrilled to have a bathroom and an inside toilet, a Rayburn for cooking and to keep us warm. My maternal grandfather Caleb Tyler and his parents before him lived in a two up, two down cottage next door to the Bishops opposite a pond, water was from a pump at the bottom of the Lane. My mother Kathleen Tyler, her brother Geoffrey and my father Lionel Ring from Stadhampton both attended the village school up to the age of fourteen. I attended the village school from 1957 to 1963 where Mr Hunt was headmaster, with other teachers whose names I cannot remember, we were taught a fairly wide range of subjects.
Over the years I remember using the village hall for PE lessons, Christmas parties, jumble sales, cheese and wine and bingo evenings, having summer fetes in the rectory garden, cycling down Latchford Lane for a paddle in the brook, Mr Thompson taking Sunday services in St Peter's, singing in the choir and Sunday school, Kit and Jane the horses retired from a bygone age on the farm, Mr Clark the Blacksmith. At one time Great Haseley had three shops, a bakers, a Post Office, three pubs, a regular bus service to take you to Oxford or Thame, a flourishing school with children coming from Great and Little Milton, Milton Common and Rycote. Families were larger than today, we all played together up The Back Way or Mill Lane, went up to the Windmill or made camps. I remember names such as Richardson, Surman, Smith, Belson, Collins, Payne, Lovell, Poole, Pickett, Harris, Slaymaker and Ring.
Going back to the village now is such a change from what it once was, you can walk up the street and see no-one, the only meeting place is the Plough public house, long may it flourish.