History of the Lye Valley
This map showing part of Headington in 1605 belongs to Corpus Christi College.
“Leye Hill” can be seen on the right on the border with Cowley, and also “Ley bushe” Two poles and twenty perches
of land belonging to Corpus and rented by Walter Welles straddles Lye Hill and is marked in red
This 1777 map of Cowley by Christ Church shows Lye Hill clearly defined
The Lye Valley a hundred years ago
The photographer Henry Taunt describes the Lye Valley as it was in 1915:
Historic aerial views of the Lye Valley on the Britain from Above website
- 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)
Four Historic England photographs of the Lye Valley area
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 a both a children's playground and rubbish dump, and how it is still a magical place for him
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”