Almost 700 years ago, Welei was small community of around sixty souls near Preston.
It was tucked away just to the north of Sootfield Green and only a mile from Preston. Welei was based on an ancient road known later as Wayley Green Road and, today, as Tatmore Hills Lane. There were about nineteen dwellings clustered around a green beside the forest which is Wain Wood. Nearby ponds provided a source of water. The inhabitants worked 240 acres of arable land and woodland in which their pigs roamed. Welei was self-governing, being a manor in its own right. Intriguingly, its villagers were thought to be involved in some form of pagan worship.
In the middle of the fourteenth century, Welei was in a desperate plight. Successive years of raw winters and wet, cold summers. in which harvests failed saw it on its knees. Then from the east, in 1348/9, came a new peril – plague! People sickened and quickly died. The few survivors at Welei buried the bodies of their family and friends in Wayley Close, an adjacent field. Then, having nothing to keep them there, wandered off to make new beginnings in Hitchin and other villages.
Over centuries, their homes collapsed and nature reclaimed the land. Today, nothing visible remains of Welei, save the two ponds. The ancient road is now a bridle path. The ancient green is a tangle of trees and undergrowth. However, lurking just beneath the surface of the flora and fauna are foundations of houses, abandoned artefacts and skeletons in unmarked graves.
Thus, a small community died and was lost forever. In the twenty-first century, few people if any are aware that Welei had ever existed until now. Incidentally plague victims were usually interred in consecrated ground if possible, but as folk law says these people were pagans that could explain why they are believed to be in the nearby fields.