Harriett Elizabeth Warneford was born in 1803 and, apart from ten years in London, lived all her life at Warneford Place, Sevenhampton. The Highworth Historical Society says she grew up on the old legends told by tenants, carters and shepherds, and loved the hares on the estate, which were not afraid of her. An old woodman by the osier beds is quoted as saying she was like a red leveret, and that when she was dying the great downland hares would gather to dance the passing dance, for she had a hare's spirit in her.
Harriett died on 7 March 1861. The day after her funeral the house stood locked and empty. Then, as the woodman had foretold, red hares came darting onto the lawns and danced in the moonlight. The keeper, a man named Eagles, saw them while out after poachers. He hid behind a great tree, struck still with fear, as dozens of hares came from the fields round about, running singly and in small groups. They danced and boxed on the long lawns by the lake, and he said he had his gun but could not fire it.
The society draws on Mary Gibson's book on Harriet Warneford. It says the story was thought to have both a natural and a supernatural meaning, but the supernatural version was the one local people accepted, helped by her name and her red gold hair like a hare's pelt. Eagles was convinced that he had seen her spirit enter the body of a hare, and would never shoot at a hare again. For a long time anyone shooting at a hare was warned it might be the one that held Miss Harriet. The legend later faded. The account is a retelling of a late Victorian estate story, so the date given for the night, 15 March 1861, is the source's own and has not been checked against other records.
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