Aldeby Church History

RESEARCHES UPON THE SITE KNOWN
AS THE
CHURCH OF SAINT JOHN, ALDEBY, IN THE COUNTY OF LEICESTER,
AND IN THE PARISH OF ENDERBY,
BY
M. PAUL DARE, Member of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, the Historical Association, and
' the Leicestershire Archaeological Society. Author of
" Aylestone Manor and Church," " History of
Allexton," Etc., Etc.
AUGUST, 1925 (from the parish magazine)

Probably many natives of Enderby, who may have taken part in the annual service held on S. John's Day at a mound which stands in a field beside the Soar, have wondered why such a service is held, and what is the significance of the mound. It represents the site of a lost church, known as"Saint John's at Aldeby," and a search amongst ancient documents has revealed some curious facts concerning its somewhat brief and scanty history.
The only sources from which we gain any information upon the Church of Aldeby are (i) The Charter of Robert Bossu, Earl of Leicester, and founder of Leicester Abbey, who gives to that house " the Church of Aldeby and also of Weston " (Whetstone); and (2) The Rentale of the Abbey property, compiled by Prior William Charyte, an inmate of the Abbey for over sixty years. This is known as the Repertorium Cartarum, etc., dates from about 1487 A. D., and is at the British Museum. We will let this Rentale tell its own story having arranged the extracts in something like order:-
(1) "We possess a Church of Aldeby, the gift of our Founder, with all its appurtenances. In the time of Oliver, Bishop of Lincoln, by his Faculty, the Church of Endurby (Enderby) was made a parish Church, as appears more fully under the heading of " Enderby." Memorandum, that the Vicar of the said Church of Aldeby is responsible for its repair, as is shown by the agreement between himself and the parishioners." (A further statement on this subject appears below).
(2) "Endredeby and Aldeby."
'' We have in Endredeby (Enderby) a Church appropriated to our use, with tithes of corn and hay, by the Charter of our Founder, as is evident from the ' Matriculus,' and from King Henry II's confirmation thereof :-' The Patron of the Church of Endredeby is the Abbot of Leicester, who holds the same to his own uses from ancient times ; and it has the Chapelry of Wheston (Whetstone), which has a resident priest and all parochial rights and sacraments, but does not pay synodals.'
" In the ' Establishment of Vicarages ' of Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, it is ordered that the Vicar of Endredeby Church shall receive, in the name of his vicariate, all the altar dues and offerings ( = privy tithes), and land tithes there, namely, one virgate of land ( = 30 acres), and that he shall render yearly to the Lord Abbot and Convent the sum of one mark. Furthermore it is ordered that he shall have the assistance of a chaplain (the equivalent of our curate) and shall pay synodals."
" And, it being known that the Church of Aldeby, which stands in a field beside the Soar, used to be the parish Church, and as such was given to us in our Founder's charter, the Church of Endredeby was, in the time of the aforesaid Oliver, Bishop of Lincoln (i.e., Oliver Sutton, 1280-1300), made the Parish Church."
The next entry explains how the change came about :-
" Richard, Bishop of Lincoln (Richard Gravesend, 1258-1279), considering the various dangers in connection with the Soar (? floods) which frequently occurred to our parishioners of Endredeby when they came to worship in the Mother Church of Aldeby, gave permission to all whose interests were concerned that the Church of Aldeby should be completely removed and in its place the parish Church of Endredeby should be constructed afresh, and the Chapelry (daughter-church) of Wheston should become attached to the mother Church ; and laying aside all those things which were at the time of the transaction kept up in and by the Church of Aldeby (or, the passage may mean that everything had been lost, as seems to be suggested by the bargain given below in connection with the upkeep of certain church furniture), appurtenances and duties were handed over to Endredeby to be maintained by that Church, as is plain in writings dated 26th March. 1270."
"Let it be remembered that W the Abbot of Leicester and those acting with him gave to Simon, son of Simon of Endredeby, one virgate of land which was adjacent to the Church of Aldeby, with its appurtenances, and also one toft in the same estate which Stephen Kylikok held . . ."
" We have also the agreement between the Vicar of Endredeby and his parishioners in regard to the repair of the Church of Aldeby; in which it is stated that the Vicar was to jceep in repair the Church, and the parishioners the burial ground enclosure of the said Church, and this appears more fully in the agreement."
That the former priest's house was still standing at Aldeby site in the mid-fifteenth century is evident from the statement in Charyte that John Gylford then held the Abbey's dwelling-house, which " aforetime was the Rectory of Aldeby."

Charyte tells us that when the change was made from Aldeby to Enderby, Philip de Nevil, lord of the manor of Enderby, bound himself to find a missal, chalice, patten, and principal vestment for the priest in the new church as he had done aforetime at Aldeby. This rather looks as though Aldeby were still kept on ; or, as I suggested above, perhaps Aldeby and its contents got "swamped " by the river. Enderby, like the mother Church, is dedicated to S. John.
There is no mention of Aldeby in the earliest source for details of local churches, the Rolls of Bishop Hugo de Welles. Enderby occurs as follows, however, in the rolls, in the section known as the Matriculus (the date of this is 1209-1235) :
"The Abbot of Leicester is the patron of the Church of Endredeby, holding it to his own usages from ancient times ; and has the Chapelry of Wheston which has a resident priest (Chaplain) and full parochial rights and sacraments, but does not pay synodals."
In the "Ordination ot Vicarages," of Bishop Hugh de Welles, under the date 1226, we have the following :-
"The Vicarage of Endredeby: Richard de Grahame, Chaplain, was presented by the Abbot and Convent of Leicester to the perpetual Vicarage of the parish of Endredeby with all its appurtenances, everything being in order, . . . and was canonically instituted into the same with the responsibility of personally ministering in the office of a priest in the said parish, and he is to have his own assistant priest to minister in the Chapelry of Wheston . . ."
By 1234, Hugh de Wikingestone had become vicar of Enderby. In the record of his institution in that year, we are told that the vicarage " consisted of all privy tithes with one virgate of land, but the Chapter (at the Abbey) did not know whether it (the vicarage) could be taxed by the Lord Bishop, and it was valued at 6 marks."
In the Taxation of Pope Nicholas, A.D. 1253-8, we find the Church of Enderby valued at 7 marks, and there is another valuation giving " Endredeby with the Chapelry of Wetston . . . 15. marks."
A few general notes on the Church site will not be out of place, after the colossal collection of documentary evidence we have just been considering.
When the local historian Nichols visited the spot about 1803, he saw there the following gravestones: (1) "Here under lie the remains of Julius Edwin, a scholar, who departed this life Feb. 25, 1712, in the gth year of his age."
(2) "Grace Illston, died Nov. 20, 1714."
(3) "John Illston, died Feb. 12, 1761, aged 75."
(4) " Elizabeth, wife of John Illston, died March 25. 1770, aged 74."
Nichols also saw, and gives a sketch of, what appears to be a XIII. Century coffin-lid, but there is now (1925) no trace either of this or the other tombstones above ground.
There is recorded in the "Midland Counties Historical Collector," vol. i, page 140, a very singular piece of folk-lore relating to the ruined Church site of Aldeby. The story is as follows : -
Old folks of the district tell that 'time out of mind,' a jovial company were assembled round the alehouse fire at Enderby one stormy night, when, from merry tales and songs, they gradually got conversing on ghostly subjects; and in conclusion the servant girl was dared to go to S. John's by herself at midnight, she being sceptical on the subject of spectres. The challenge being accepted, and a wager laid, the girl went. Be it said to their credit, that some of the young men of the company followed, unknown to her, to see that she came to no harm.
When she reached the churchyard wall, the lass was confronted with the astonishing spectacle of a man digging a grave. Nearby was a lady, bound to a tree, who was yelling for mercy and begging at least to be slain before she was buried !
Taking in the situation, the frightened servant girl shouted loudly for help, whereat the sinister digger left his grave-making and mounted his horse which was tethered there, and riding into the river, he disappeared. But the lady seems to have been more solid, for she is said to have been unbound by the men who came running up at the barmaid's shout, and to have spent the rest of her life in Enderby, always refusing to say who she was, or whence she came.
The above legend takes a great deal of explaining, but there is another one connected with the spot in which certain features are readily recognisable by the scientific student of folk-lore. You may have heard old villagers tell it yourself.
This is to the effect that on the site where the mounds now are, a Church was being built for the ioint use oi Enderby and Whetstone, which so excited the wrath of the Devil that he pulled down at night what was built in the daytime.
The story has a parallel in the legend of the angry Bogonie and S. Finian's Church, Isle of Marr, which no one has to this day been able to roof; and then there is the Lincoln Imp case of an attempt to undo church work. The Aldeby story has a closer analogue than these, however, for exactly the same is related of the Church of Tilton in Leicestershire. This type of legend is believed to be Teutonic in origin. The story is more or less accurate in the statement that the church was for the joint use of Enderby and Whetstone, since, as I have shown inthe historical extracts above, Whetstone was a Chapelry of Enderby when the latter first appears in the Bishop's Rolls, and Aldeby Church was the forerunner of the one at Enderby, so that it is very probable Whetstone was in the first place a chapel to Aldeby.

(To be continued.)

RESEARCHES UPON THE CHURCH OF SAINT JOHN, ALDEBY,
AND SOME NOTES ON THE
"ABBEY" OF LUBBESTHORPE,
BY
M. PAUL DARE, Member of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, the Historical Association, and
' the Leicestershire Archaeological Society. Author of
" Aylestone Manor and Church," " History of
Allexton," Etc., Etc.
SEPTEMBER, 1925 (from the parish magazine)

Our records show clearly that S. John's, Alderby, was originally the church of Enderby, but that in the time of Richard Gravesend, the bishop of Lincoln, 1258-79, a movement was set on foot to get the site shifted to Enderby owing to the "dangers " attendant on getting to Aldeby. Having regard to the position of the ruined church, on the bank of the Soar, these dangers were most likely the floods. The transfer would not seem to have been legally completed, however, till the time of the next Bishop, Oliver Sutton, 1280-1300. When it had been done, an agreement was made that the Vicar should still keep the church at Aldeby in repair, and the parishioners the burial-ground around it.
The difficulty is, however, that we already find a church at Enderby in full swing by the year 1220, according to Welles' Rolls, which incidentally make no mention of Aldeby. I am inclined to think that a perfectly good explanation of this may be put forward in the assumption that the "Enderby" of Welles' Rolls is the site of the Aldeby Church, as we are elsewhere plainly told that this was regarded as being the church of Enderby.
Whether there was ever a hamlet at Aldeby or not is a question which cannot be settled. It does not occur as a place in Domesday. But the Danish termination "by" seems to suggest a settlement of some kind. There are several other places of the same or similar name scattered about the country, eg., Aldeby (Beccles), Aldeburgh (Suffolk), Aldbury (Tring), &c.
It is of interest to note that, the intervening fields between the ruined mound and the main road being in secular hands, there is still a right of way once a year, on S. John's Day, or thereabouts, when the Vicars of Enderby conduct a service on the site of S. John's Church. And so we will leave this mystery ruin in peace, at the point where we took up the investigations of its story.

WAS THERE AN ABBEY AT LUBBESTHORPE?
I have been asked by your Vicar, in view of the fact that Lubbesthorpe is now attached to Enderby, to give a few notes this month on the place called "Lubbesthorpe Abbey," represented now, I believe, by a solitary farmhouse. Here it might suprise some readers to know, we find Lubbesthorpe mentioned, not in connection with Enderby, but with the village of Ayleston, near Leicester, for the place was only transferred to your village (for church purposes) so late as 1903, by an Order in Council. In the " Matriculus" of this Bishop, which may be best described as a survey of the churches, we read that:-
" The patron of the Church of Ayleston is Richard de Harcourt, the parson Philip de Cuneston. instituted by Hugh, now Bishop; and the church has two chapels, Lobstorp (Lubbesthorpe) which has a resident ' chaplain, and Glen (Glen Parva), which has to be served by the mother church (i.e. Ayleston) three days in the week.
From this it is very clear how the legend of an "abbey " got abroad. You had a stone-built chapel, and a resident curate, as we should call him, on the spot, and, to heighten the illusion, there never seems have been a village in the proper sense, but merely few scattered homesteads. The chapel, by the way, bore the dedication of St. Peter, as does the Church of Ayleston, and from the date of these particular Rolls, the chaplain must have been instituted about 1220, or a little earlier. In an inventory made in 1253-58 for taxation purposes, known to students as the "Taxatio of Pope Nicholas," Lubbesthorpe does not figure independently, nor does Glen, but the living of Ayleston is valued at fifteen marks The amount is large compared with the majority of entries, but that of course included the valuation of these two chapelries. I said above that " there does not seem to have been a village in the proper sense" at Lubbesthorpe. I should really have said that there was no manor, the place is mentioned in the Domesday Book (1086 A.D.) where, in a very technical passage which I will not inflict upon you, we are told that a gentleman named " Payn " or Pagen held about 115 acres of land under William Peverel, owner of Foston in this district. In the lands there were 4.1 acres of meadow ,and 8 acres of " infertile woodland." A person named Ricolf, too, was tenant of Peverel for a small amount ol land at Kirby Muxloe which "belonged to Lubbesthorpe."
Passing over a couple of centuries or so, we find Lubbesthorpe occuring in what is called the "Lay Subsidy Roll" for Leicestershire. They were as fond of taxing people in the Middle Ages as they are to day ! There are shown to be nine taxable residents here, with a total of 20/-. This is not so ludicrous as it appears, when we have to reflect that the sum must be multiplied by about 20 to get the value in modern money. As for the disappearance of Lubbesthorpe,and the decay of its chapel, history is silent on the point ; but we may hazard a fairly safe conjecture that it was due to one of those terrible, unwritten trajedies, the total wipping out of a settlement by the hideous black death which wrought such havoc in England in the middle of the fourteenth century.