Weston

Weston is the oldest part of Hay on Wye, the area around St Mary's Church and the mott and bailey castle. It was legally separate from the town of Hay until the 17th and 18th centuries. Medieval documents describe the different parts of Hay as Haia Fforeign (English Hay), the area within the town walls, and Haia Wallensis (Welsh Hay) the area outside the walls. This included Weston Hamlett. During the 19th and 20th centuries this became the area of town expansion. Within it were...
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Weston is the oldest part of Hay on Wye, the area around St Mary's Church and the mott and bailey castle. It was legally separate from the town of Hay until the 17th and 18th centuries. Medieval documents describe the different parts of Hay as Haia Fforeign (English Hay), the area within the town walls, and Haia Wallensis (Welsh Hay) the area outside the walls. This included Weston Hamlett.
During the 19th and 20th centuries this became the area of town expansion. Within it were two sets of almshouses, a workhouse, the National school, isolation hospital, a new cemetery, the recreation facilities at the Warren, and a World War Two Bletchley Park monitoring station.It is now the site of the Hay International Literary Festival.
This book describes all this, as well as some of the inhabitants, the chemist with a diplomat daughter, the refugee Belgian professor, the Red Cross ambulance train matron, the borough surveyor cum Bletchley Park Voluntary Interceptor, as well as 'Lanty' Steele Dixon, WWII pilot and step son of the author Raphel Sabartini, buried under a beautiful sculpture in the cemetery. These and others are all here, easily overlooked but an essential part of the history of Hay on Wye.