Thurleigh, as described in Samuel Lewis's Topographical
Dictionary, 1859:
A parish, in the hundred of Willey, union and county of Bedford, 6
Miles North from Bedford. containing 617 inhabitants. It comprises
by admeasurement 3379 acres. The manufacturer of pillow-lace employs
nearly all the females above six years of age. The Living is a
discharged vicarage, valued in the king's books at £9; net income,
£142; patrol and impropriator, S. Crawley, Esq. The tithes were
commuted for land and a money payment in 1805; there is a
parsonage-house, with 237 acres of glebe.
The church is chiefly in the later English style, and has an acient
tower entered by a Norman doorway, in which is an arch filled up
with a stone block having a scultured representation of the
Tempation and Fall of Adam and Eve in Paradise. Here is a place of
worship for Baptists; also a national school endowed with £17 per
annum. In the parish is the moated site of the ancient mansion of
Blackbull Hall; and on Bury Hill are vestiges of a circular camp. |
