Thurleigh (St. Peter)

THURLEIGH (St. Peter), a parish, in the hundred of Willey, union and county of Bedford, 6 miles (N.) from Bedford; containing 617 inhabitants. It comprises by admeasurement 3379 acres. The manufacture of pillow-lace employs nearly all the females above six years of age. The living is a discharged vicarage, valued in the king's books at £9; net income, £142; patron and impropriator, S. Crawley, Esq. The tithes were commuted for land and a money payment in 1805; there is a parsouage-house, with 237 acres of glebe. The church is chiefly in the later English style, and has an ancient tower entered by a Norman doorway, in which is an arch filled up with a stone block having a sculptured representation of the Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve in Paradise. Here is a place of worship for Baptists; also a national school endowed with £17 per annum. In the parish is the moated site of the ancient mansion of Blackbull Hall; and on Bury Hill are vestiges of a circular camp.