Isleham (St. Andrew)

ISLEHAM (St. Andrew), a parish, in the union of Newmarket, hundred of Staploe, county of Cambridge, 4½ miles (W.) from Mildenhall; containing 2127 inhabitants. The parish comprises about 5000 acres, and is intersected by the river Lark, which communicates with the Cam; the road from Ely to Mildenhall passes within two miles. Stone is quarried for building purposes and for burning into lime. The living is a discharged vicarage, valued in the king's books at £13. 3. 1½.; net income, £450; patron and appropriator, the Bishop of Rochester: there are about three acres of glebe, and a glebe-house. The church, a handsome edifice, belonged to a priory dedicated to St. Margaret, founded here as a cell to the abbey of St. Jagitto, in Brittany, and granted by Henry VI. to Pembroke College, Cambridge; the revenue was valued at £10. 13. 4. The building was new roofed in the reign of Henry VII.; it contains many fine monuments, of which some are of the fourteenth century. There are places of worship for General and Particular Baptists. An hospital for five widowers and five widows was founded by the lady of Sir Robert Peyton, who died in 1518; the annual income amounts to £135. 16. The remains of a very old church here are now used as a barn. In the fens have been found deer's horns, bones of the old British beaver now extinct, and also human bones.