Batt House on Market Square
Alice Maud Batt was born at Batt House in 1889 to Charles and Isabel Dorrington Batt.
The Batt family had been doctors and surgeons in the local area for five generations before Alice was born. The family had lived at Batt House since 1880.
Alice was educated at home and then later at Wycombe Abbey school. In 1911 she joined the Oxford 22 VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) and in 1914 moved to the Lady Evelyn Mason Hospital for Officers in Mayfair.
In 1915 Alice was awarded the Bronze Medal of the Royal Humane Society after she saved a girl from drowning.
In March 1916 she is recoded as arriving at the No 9 British Red Cross Hospital in Calais. Alice spent the remainder of the war in various hospitals and casualty clearing stations. In 1917 Alice received the Special Service Cross from the British Red Cross.
In 1918 Alice was awarded the Albert Medal (since renamed the George Cross) for heroic action in saving life. Alice was one of only 16 women to receive the Albert Medal in WWI.
After her father’s death in 1926, Alice and her siblings gave Batt House and its land to the church and parish of St Mary the Virgin “for the use of the children of Witney and neighbourhood as school and playground”. The Batt C of E Primary School on the land behind the house is a reminder of the family’s contribution to the town.
Alice died in 1969 aged 79 at Burford, Oxfordshire.
By Amy, volunteer at Witney and District Museum