Casterton, Little (All Saints)

CASTERTON, LITTLE (All Saints), a parish, in the union of Stamford, hundred of East, county of Rutland, 2 miles (N. W. by N.) from Stamford; containing 132 inhabitants. This parish includes the ancient hamlet of Tolethorpe, where was a college of priests or a chantry, refounded, and endowed with ten marks per annum, in the 36th of Edward III. by William de Burton. The estate was purchased from his descendant, Thomas de Burton, about 1504, by Christopher Brown, ancestor of the Countess Dowager of Pomfret, after whose decease, the reversion of the property, together with the advowson of the living, was purchased by the Earl of Burlington. The parish comprises about 1287 acres, which, with the exception of about 279 acres subject to a corn-rent, are tithe-free. The great north road runs about a mile from the village. Good freestone is quarried. The living is a rectory, valued in the king's books at £6. 15. 5.; net income, £254; patron, the Hon. C. C. Cavendish. The tithes were commuted for land and a corn-rent in 1796; the glebe comprises about 53 acres. The church is a small edifice, partly of later Norman architecture, and partly in the early, decorated, and later English styles; the chancel has been rebuilt. A parochial school is supported chiefly by endowment. At the western extremity of the parish, but now filled up by the formation of a new road, was a deep fosse, part of the Roman camp at Great Casterton. Not far from the manor-house at Tolethorpe, is a spring of carbonated chalybeate water without any mixture of sulphuric acid, similar to the water at Tonbridge-Wells, but less powerful.