Page 29 - Thrapston Life August 2023

GLANCE
AT THE
PAST
Eric Franklin looks back
On the corner of Huntingdon Road, Market Road and Kingfisher Road, a new care home has recently been completed, Hermitage House. The site was for
many years an overgrown plot of
land with the demolished remains
of a detached house named The Hermitage, at 60 Huntingdon Road. This is shown on this unused postcard dating to the early years of the twentieth century and taken no later than 1910.
Ruines of a very large hermitage welle builded but a late discovered and suppressed: and hard
“At the very end of Thrapeston Bridge stand Ruines of a very large hermitage “
by is the Toune of Islep.”
The ruins referred to were probably
those of the chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr, in Hermitage Close by the river. The chapel was standing in 1400, when William Mareschal, chaplain, had the custody of the king’s free chapel or hermitage at the end of the bridge of Islip. In 1492, Henry Vere bequeathed 10s. to the chapel which is described
In circa 1545, John Leland, who was
an antiquary and is by some considered to be the father of English local history, wrote:
“At the very end of Thrapeston Bridge stand
as one of two chapels annexed to the mother church of Islip. There are no remains of this chapel and even the precise location is unknown.
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