much against the wishes of his father and mother, and a great deal of unpleasantness followed. Seeing he could not marry the girl of his choice, he left home and joined the army, and a few years after was killed in battle. After death he returned to the old home, and was seen many times walking about the place with his head under his arm. The girl died of a broken heart, and the ghost was laid in Lane End Pond, just at the end of the village on the Wallingford Road.—(From old Mrs. Kislingbury, of Ipsden, 8th August, 1897.)[1]
At Woodperry House, some eighty years ago, much commotion was felt by the people both in and out of the house by sights and sounds not to be named. The servants and others about the place were constantly upset by meeting something, they did not know what, and hearing noises like the rustling of silk, the falling of fire-irons, and the breaking of crockery. In front of the house, facing Horton, was a large lawn, with a summer-house on either side, where sometimes a man's, and at other times a woman's figure was seen. It is said that old Dr. Wilson (President of Trinity College, 1850-66) met a man in the hall, and was going to speak, but the figure vanished suddenly. Some forty years ago the ghosts were laid by Dr. Wilson and other clergymen in a well under a wood-pile.—(From T. Kinch, aged 67, February, 1898.)
Old Mrs. East, a widow aged nearly seventy, and a native of Wheatley, says that when she was a child, she was frightened by being told she must not go up Hollis Close at night, or she would see Betty Brown. This Betty Brown died about a hundred years ago, and after death she came again, and walked the Close. She was at last laid by twelve clergymen in Hollis' Ditch, after which she kept quiet. The Close was afterwards cut through by the Oxford and Wycombe Railway.—(10th February, 1898.)
One Dick Fellers, of Crowell, when a boy, kept sheep on Crowell Hill, and gave much of his time to studying herbs and flowers. After a time he took to making concoctions from them, and performed many cures of sickness. When he died, he wished to be buried in the wood where he had spent so many years, but
- ↑ Mr. John Reade, of Ipsden, had, by his wife, Anna Maria Scott-Waring, a son, Henry Jonathan, born 1801, who became a lieutenant in the 4th Bengal Light Cavalry, and was killed in action at Kolah, 17th October, 1S21.—(Compton Reade, Records of the Reades, 1899, pp. 72, 84.) This seems to suit the approximate date, and the early death of the unfortunate lover.
