Horace Highley

The next one in our series on Hileys/Highleys who lost their lives in WW1.

Horace Highley, born in Halifax, was the son of Joseph and Charlotte Elizabeth and in 1911, aged 19, was living with his parents and older brother James Wallace at 18 Grove Street, Bolton Brow, Sowerby Bridge. He was a Machine Fitter. The following year he married Emily Webster and a daughter Elsie was born in 1913.

Horace first signed up in July 1908 and then joined the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding Regiment) 1st/4th Battalion in Halifax after war broke out in 1914. The Battalion fought in actions on the Western Front in 1915 and Horace was wounded in the field on 19th December 1915 and died at no. 10 Casualty Clearing Station, close to the Front, 3 days later. He is buried at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery in Belgium.

Horace Highley's gravestone in Belgium
(included courtesy of Steve Rogers, The War Graves Photographic Project)

A year later Emily married James Bradbury in Halifax. The couple lived at the Turk’s Head Inn in Sowerby Bridge.

James Hiley the Boatman

Lady of the Lake and burnt-out Lord of the Isles on the right

(included with the permission of Ian Boyle, Simplon Postcards website)

In 1845 the wooden Lady of the Lake became the first steamboat built to sail on an English lake. She was operated by the Windermere Steam Yacht Company and sailed from Newby Bridge to Ambleside, a distance of eleven miles which she covered in about an hour and a quarter. Such was the success of Lady of the Lake in her first year, that a second steamer was ordered, the Lord of the Isles, which was launched in 1846. Unfortunately her career was short-lived; she was destroyed by fire in 1850 while moored at Bowness pier. The fire occurred in suspicious circumstances and James Hiley, fireboy of the Lord, and William Jackson, fireboy of the Lady, were accused of wilfully setting fire to her. The lads were locked up in Appleby Prison to await trial at the local Assize Court but the case was dismissed. The judge ruled that it was unlikely that the boys would have deliberately destroyed the vessel as by doing so they would have denied themselves work.
(Windermere Lake Cruises, Company History - with permission)

James had been born in Hornby in 1833. His father Matthew, the organist at the Parish Church in Bowness, was born in Halifax in 1780. Matthew's father, also Matthew, and baptised in Ovenden near Halifax in 1747, was the son of John Hiley. It has not been possible yet to connect this John with the early Hiley/Highley families from the Halifax area.

John Campbell, in his book ‘Village by the Water – a History of Bowness-on-Windermere’, says that the occupations of fishermen and boatmen remained the exclusive preserve of local men, and mentions James Hiley as one of the three Windermere boatmen listed in the 1851 Census. ‘The boats in which visitors liked to pass a relaxing time on the water were owned by the hotels ………….the three boatmen would row them around the islands or elsewhere’.

In the 1861 Census James, now described as a Musician, was recorded as living in Crosthwaite near Keswick and he married Frances Walker the following year. After that no record has been found for James.

James’s brother John was a Tailor who lived in Bowness. John’s son Alfred was a Naval Architect and Engineer who worked at Vickers in Barrow-in-Furness.

We have no records of any children for either James or John.

Origin of the Hiley name

George Redmonds, in ‘A Dictionary of Yorkshire Surnames’, says that the Hiley/Highley name is from High Lee in Luddenden near Halifax. High Lee is a small area on the Sowerby hillside above the Calder valley.

The modern Hiley or Highley name has generally been assumed to mean a ‘high clearing’ or a ‘high meadow’. But the early records, like Helileghe or Heylyligh, include an extra syllable. In ‘The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire’ A.H. Smith suggests that the first part of the surname is from the Anglo Saxon word ‘hygel’, a hillock. ‘Leah’ was an Anglo Saxon word for clearing. So the name might have originally meant a 'clearing on a hillock’.

In ‘Yorkshire West Riding’ in the English Surname Series, George Redmonds gives the first appearance of the name in the West Riding as being in 1297. This is an entry in the Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield for Thomas del Hegeleye, and this name would fit in with Smith’s reasoning, but there appear to be no other spellings similar to this one, i.e. including the letter g.

George Redmonds writes: ‘The problem with Highley has always been the interpretation of the earliest spellings. I have to say that I gave that as evidence because it fitted A.H. Smith’s etymology of the Luddenden place-name. Since that time more evidence has become available but no similar spellings that I know of. Mostly the surname examples follow a pattern, e.g. Heylilygh, Helylye and that persists well into the fifteenth century. I have sometimes wondered if Hegeleye was a mis-transcription for Heyeleye’.

This photo is taken from Hathershelf looking across to High Lee. In the distance on the left is the Warley hillside across the Calder valley.