Grendon, Northamptonshire

The advowson of the church, including 12 acres (49,000 m²) of glebe land – including their common rights and village tithes, was granted in 1342, to King's Hall, Cambridge by Edward III. When Trinity College, Cambridge was founded in 1546, the advowson was transferred to the Master and Fellows of the new Trinity College. In 1780, following an enclosure act, the tithes were all reduced to a cash payment. The control of the living was transferred in 1926 to the Bishop of Peterborough.

In 1970, excavations produced evidence of an abandoned village or deserted medieval village, known as Coton (which means cottages) situated behind Grendon Hall.

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Battle of Grendon

On 29 August 1876, a battle took place between local farmers and their men over water rights. The scene was commemorated in a poem by a local poet.

The church is built from limestone rubble with ironstone dressings. In the church are the remains, in the form of two rounded arches, of the original 12th century building. The two eastern bays of the nave arcades and the chancel were rebuilt between 1368 and 1380, with the clerestory being added in the 15th century along with the four-storey tower; the tower contains a ring of five bells, dating from 1618. The church houses a wooden framed clock which was made locally in 1690. The tower now uses a replacement made in 1970, but the original is still kept in the church as an exhibit and remains in working order.

Inside the church, on each side of the chancel there are medieval wooden corbel carvings of the grotesque faces of a nagging wife and her leering husband - they are thought to have been a local couple.

The gargoyles on the four corners of the tower represent the four evangelists:

• a bull for St Luke and
• a lion for St Mark
• a man's head for St Matthew
• an eagle for St John

The chancel was re-roofed in around 1848. There are three hatchments relating to the Compton family - one bearing ravens represents the arms of a former Lord Lieutenant of the Tower of London.

Of the church, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner says, "The first three bays on both sides are late Norman. Next in order of time the late 12th century doorway with one order of shafts carrying simple moulded capitals and an arch with a thick roll moulding. Early 13th century the simple north doorway close to a pair of lancets. Money was left to the campanile in 1453."

Other features include:

• A book of commemoration for the eight parishioners killed in World War I and World War II.
• A medieval squint cut through the wall to give a view of the altar during services
• A memorial plaque to Thomas Willoughby of nether Grendon (Lower End)
• A three-seat sedilia set into the stone wall which was used by the priest, the deacon and sub-deacon
• A Victorian lead-lined font
• A wooden bier
• An oak pulpit dating from 1908
• Set into the floor, a 15th-century brass of an unknown and unnamed woman set between two husbands dressed in the armour of the type used at the Battle of Bosworth Field
• Set into the south wall is a 13th-century piscina used by priests to rinse their hands during mass.

• 
  The outside of the church in winter
• 
  Inside the Church
• 
  The grotesque nagging wife
• 
  The nagging wife's husband
• 
  The workings of the old clock
• 
  One of the hatchments
• 
  The squint - now partially blocked
• 
  A tomb or Easter Sepulchre
• 
  The bier

Grendon Hall

Most of the present hall dates from the 17th century when it was rebuilt by General Hatton Compton, although certain earlier parts date to the 1570s. Pevsner describes the east front as being "fine" quality. It is thought to be the work of John Lumley of Northampton.

In WWII the hall was used by the SOE as a training camp for the Free French.

Next to the present site of Grendon Hall, but on the other side of the brook is the site of a much earlier medieval manor house owned by Richard de Harrington, whose fish ponds remain today as part of the grounds of the present hall.

In 1946, after the death of the then owner Miss Mundy, the hall was sold to the County Council. The hall was re-opened by the then Princess Elizabeth in 1946.

The house was designed by S.S. Teulon and built in 1850. Pevsner describes it as a "...picturesque Tudor with an odd lantern with cupola ; handsome gabled with mullioned windows." It is now a private house.

The village has three small charities:

• Charles Markham memorial trust
• Poor's Close (set up with land bequeathed by the Rev Robert Shelbourne)
• Richard Piper Coles will trust