The Myers map of Halifax

This month the posts will concentrate on the area where the Yorkshire Hileys originated.

George Redmonds, the expert on Yorkshire surnames, said that the Hiley name came from High Lee in Luddenden. Go back to the post of 10th February 2019 for more about the origin of the name.

J.F. Myers produced a map of the Parish of Halifax in 1834-1835. An extract from it is shown below.

High Lee is situated on the Sowerby hillside to the west of Luddenden Foot across the Calder valley. Strangely it seems to be marked as 'Higher Lee', a name not seen anywhere else.

The map is held by the Halifax Antiquarian Society and the digital image belongs to the Digital Archives Association (www.digitalarchives.co.uk). Permission to show this extract has been given by both of these organisations.

You will need to click on the map to enlarge it.

Myers map of Halifax

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.