WHALLEY'S WORLD

A BLAST of musket fire has been shot through a recent Cromwellian theory as to how Thatto Heath got its unusual placename.

Kevin Heneghan, retired teacher and eager delver into the past, writes: "If Oliver Cromwell had been forced to camp on 'That Old 'Eath' (thus Thatto Heath) on his way to Edgehill, as your reader John Lake suggests, he would have sacked his navigator!"

John had picked up this place-name theory many years ago from a Donkey Common old-timer.

But Kevin says: "The Edgehill of the battle of 1642 is about seven miles North-West of Banbury, between the A422 and the B4086, within easy reach of Junction 12 of the M40." He gives those precise travel details "for the benefit of ghost-busters, as I believe that people still go there on the anniversary of the battle - October 12 - and at Christmas weekends, on account of one of the best-authenticated supernatural events in English history.

"Some 14,000 Englishmen fought one another in the first battle of the Civil War," adds Kevin, of North Road, St Helens, "achieving great slaughter but little else, though evidently they left psychic influences which have never been explained.

"On the first Christmastide after the battle some shepherds and others, banded together for a night journey to Kineton, were close to the battlefield around midnight. What they saw seemed at first like another Civil War battle, then they were terrified to see in the sky a regiment of troops." Royalist and Parliamentarian emblems, as well as the King's Colours, could be identified. "Most of the Cavaliers were mounted and the neighing of horses could be heard."

The ghostly battle raged for about two hours.

On learning of this, a magistrate named Wood and a clergyman named Marshall went with them the next night and saw the action repeated.

Crowds from miles around were drawn to the scene to witness four repeat performances over successive weekends. News reached Charles I at Oxford and he sent six officers, headed by Colonel Lewis Kirke, to make inquiries. They saw the same vision on two nights, some claiming to have recognised friends who had died in the battle.

"In fairly recent times," says Kevin, "there have been accounts of horses neighing and of strange lights above the battlefield which nowadays is divided by hedges. Many battlefields are said to have their ghosts, but Edgehill has beyond doubt the greatest number of witnesses."

NO such happenings at Edge Hill, Liverpool. So I suspect that the Thatto Heath owd codger was enjoying a little leg-pull at John Lake's expense.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.