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Thorley is a village and
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...
in
East Hertfordshire
East Hertfordshire is a local government district in Hertfordshire, England. Its council is based in Hertford, the county town of Hertfordshire. The largest town in the district is Bishop's Stortford, and the other main towns are Ware, Bunti ...
district of
Hertfordshire, England. The parish includes the
hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
s of Thorley Street, Thorley Wash and Old Thorley, and is bordered at the north by the
market town
A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rural ...
of
Bishop's Stortford.
History
Thorley is listed in the ''
Domesday book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...
'' as "Torlei", belonging to
Geoffrey de Mandeville, a notable
Norman baron. During the reign of
Edward the Confessor, Thorley Manor belonged to
Earl Tostig
Tostig Godwinson ( 102925 September 1066) was an Anglo-Saxon Earl of Northumbria and brother of King Harold Godwinson. After being exiled by his brother, Tostig supported the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada's invasion of England, and was killed ...
.
Thorley is less than one mile north from Blounts Farm in the adjoining parish of
High Wych, the place where, in 1966, the criminal
Harry Roberts was found by police during a long
manhunt after he had participated in the
Shepherd's Bush murders of three London-based policemen. He was found in a barn hiding under straw. Roberts was familiar with the area as he had often visited it as a child with his mother.
Landmarks
Thorley Church, dedicated to
St James the Great
James the Great, also known as James, son of Zebedee, Saint James the Great, Saint James the Greater, Saint James the Elder, or Saint Jacob (Aramaic ܝܥܩܘܒ ܒܪ ܙܒܕܝ, Arabic يعقوب, Hebrew בן זבדי , '' Yaʿăqōḇ'', Latin '' ...
, is a Grade I listed building. It dates to the 13th century and includes a
Norman font and a three-seat
sedilia
In church architecture, sedilia (plural of Latin ''sedīle'', "seat") are seats, usually made of stone, found on the liturgical south side of an altar, often in the chancel, for use during Mass for the officiating priest and his assistants, the ...
. The
pulpit was designed by
George Gilbert Scott. There is a one-thousand-year-old
yew tree in the
graveyard
A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...
, which also has the grave of
Daniel Defoe's sister. The graveyard is entered through a
lychgate
A lychgate, also spelled lichgate, lycugate, lyke-gate or as two separate words lych gate, (from Old English ''lic'', corpse), also ''wych gate'', is a gateway covered with a roof found at the entrance to a traditional English or English-style ch ...
dating from the 1920s. The
stocks and
whipping post
The pillory is a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, formerly used for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse. The pillory is related to the stocks ...
that stood in the graveyard until the late 20th century have now been moved to the
Bishop's Stortford Museum.
Samuel Horsley
Samuel Horsley (15 September 1733 – 4 October 1806) was a British churchman, bishop of Rochester from 1793. He was also well versed in physics and mathematics, on which he wrote a number of papers and thus was elected a Fellow of the Royal So ...
was
rector
Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to:
Style or title
*Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations
*Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...
of the Church from 1779 to 1782, following in the footsteps of his father John, who was rector from 1745 to 1777. From 1594 to 1610, the rector was
Francis Burley, one of the translators of the
King James Bible. A 16th-century
Tudor barn in the adjoining farm was converted from pig barn to a church and community centre - called the St Barnabas Centre - in 1996 with the help of a £1 million endowment.
is a
Site of Special Scientific Interest owned and managed by the
Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust between the village and the
Stort Navigation.
Amenities
Thorley has its own cricket club, Thorley C.C. The nearest local primary schools are Manor Fields Primary and Richard Whittington Primary, and Thorley Hill Primary which is on the same site as the Bishop's Stortford High School, all within and at the south of Bishops Stortford.
See also
The Hundred Parishes
References
External links
St James Church siteFriends of St JamesBritish History online
{{authority control
Villages in Hertfordshire
Civil parishes in Hertfordshire
East Hertfordshire District