Abbotsley (St. Margaret)

ABBOTSLEY (St. Margaret), a parish, in the union of St. Neot's, hundred of Toseland, county of Huntingdon, 4½ miles (S.E.) from St. Neot's; containing 443 inhabitants. It comprises about 1700 acres, and is bounded by a brook formed by the draining of the adjacent lands, and which, passing onward for three or four miles, discharges itself into the river Ouse at St. Neot's. The pillow-lace manufacture affords employment to the female population. The living is a discharged vicarage, valued in the king's books at £8. 17.; net income, £85; patrons and impropriators, the Master and Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford. The glebe consists of 185 acres, of which 125 were allotted to the vicar in lieu of the small tithes, on the inclosure of the waste lands in 1837; the glebe-house has been rebuilt. The church consists of a nave, chancel, two aisles, and a tower, with a north and south porch, a west entrance through the tower, and a chancel door; it is supposed to have been erected between the accessions of William Rufus and Edward III., and was thoroughly repaired in 1837. A Roman road once passed along the western boundary of the parish, and in its tract coins of the Roman emperors are occasionally found. Dr. Abbott, father of Charles Abbott, speaker of the house of commons, subsequently created Lord Colchester, was vicar here in the reign of George II.