Thorpe Waterville is a village in the English county of
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire ( ; abbreviated Northants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It is bordered by Leicestershire, Rutland and Lincolnshire to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshi ...
. It was first attested in 1199 as Torp(e), and Thorp Watervile in 1300. Ascelin de Waterville was a landowner in the area in the 12th century.
Geography and administration
Thorpe Waterville lies on the
A605 road, three miles north-east of the town of
Thrapston
Thrapston is a market town and civil parish in the North Northamptonshire unitary authority area of Northamptonshire, England. It was the headquarters of the former East Northamptonshire district, and at the time of the 2021 census, had a pop ...
. Together with
Achurch, it forms the
ecclesiastical parish
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...
of Thorpe Achurch, which in turn is added to another combined parish,
Lilford-cum-Wigsthorpe, to form the
grouped parish council of
Lilford-cum-Wigsthorpe and Thorpe Achurch. The village is part of the unitary authority area of
North Northamptonshire
North Northamptonshire is a Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of Northamptonshire, England, and was created in 2021. The council is based in Corby, the district's la ...
. It is located close to the
River Nene
The River Nene ( or ) flows through the counties of Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk in Eastern England from its sources in Arbury Hill in Northamptonshire. Flowing Northeast through East England to its mouth at Lutt ...
.
Historical buildings
Thorpe Waterville Castle, of which only a building used as a barn remains, was mainly the work of
Walter de Langton,
Bishop of Lichfield
The Bishop of Lichfield is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Lichfield in the Province of Canterbury. The diocese covers 4,516 km2 (1,744 sq. mi.) of the counties of Powys, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and West M ...
and Treasurer to
King Edward I
Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots (Latin: Malleus Scotorum), was King of England from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he was Lord of Ireland, and from 1254 ...
.
Chapel Cottage bears a
date stone marked with the year 1618, which is carved into the right hand side of the ingle nook fireplace. Reference to this the date stone is made in R. Gough's 1806 ''Translation of Camden's Britannia with Additions'', Northamptonshire p. 283:
Robert Brown, founder of the sect of the Browniſts, ..resided in a little thatched house in Thorpe Waterville which is still subsisting, with a date on the chimney 1618
During its renovation in the late 1970s, following a thatch roof fire, builders discovered what was rumoured to be one end of a tunnel stretching from the Manor House to Chapel Cottage. The owners of the cottage were reluctant to excavate the tunnel entrance fully so the validity of this cannot be confirmed.
References
External links
General details*
Villages in Northamptonshire
North Northamptonshire
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