It is not easy to record the history of a parish in a consistent manner, let alone to give an understandable picture of its progress through the centuries. Some information is no longer available, some is inconsistent, some is incomprehensible to the modern eye and mind, and always there is the feeling that such facts as we have are a mere snapshot, and a fairly random one at that, of fragments of the full picture. So we must take our hats off to Canon Tudor Jones who, at the end of his 30-year incumbency as rector of Headley, sat down to write Headley 1066-1966, which is still the nearest we have to a complete history of our parish. The ‘some other lover of Headley’ who he hoped would ‘one day make good’ his document has not arrived, or at least has not yet dared to embark on such an exhaustive task. However, the arrival of computers and the worldwide web, which ‘TJ’ could never have envisaged, has given us the means to bring the particulars and anecdotes of the parish to an ever wider audience in new ways-and while these may not always have the benefit of the same studied learning and deliberation which Tudor Jones brought to his work, they do offer a vast storehouse of facts, figures and images to which he had no ready access. They include tales and photographs sent to us from the four corners of the world by descendants of Headley people who have discovered their roots here using the ‘new technology.’ Also we have information transcribed from public records now available to be retrieved by all at the mere ‘click of a mouse.’ In this book you will find the contents of Canon Tudor Jones’ book faithfully reproduced, with just the occasional footnote or editorial comment added by me where it seemed appropriate. Following on, I have added as a second section all the articles previously published in the six volumes of Headley Miscellany which were produced annually by The Headley Society from 1999-2005. It now replaces these six booklets-not only a more convenient way of buying the set, but also slightly cheaper. I hope you enjoy your excursion into Headley’s history.
