Visitors book in St Laurence's church, Leaveland. Located at the west end of the church. Started 7th July 1996.
"The church, which is dedicated to St. Laurence, is a small mean building, consisting of one isle and a chancel, with a low pointed wooden turrent on it.
Against the north wall of the chancel, there is a monument for Mrs. Katherine Rooper, married first to Thomas Herdson, esq. and secondly to Edward Rooper, esq. with her figure kneeling at a desk, behind her a man in armour, and these two escutcheons of arms, Argent, a cross, sable, between four fleurs de lis, gules, impaling, Per chevron embattled, argent, and sable, in chief, two castles, in base, an escallop, or; the second, Paly of six, sable, and or, in the first, third, and fifth, a buck's head erased of the second, impaling as before.
Archbishop Lanfranc, in the reign of the Conqueror, on his founding the priory of St. Gregory, gave to it, among other premises, the tithes of the lordship of Leveland, which he had granted to Richard. How long these tithes remained with the priory, I have not found, but as they are not inserted among the possessions of it in archbishop Hubert's confirmation of them, in the reign of king Richard I. it is reasonable to suppose they did not belong to it at that time; and it appears that they were possessed by the said Richard's descendants, one of whom, Nathaniel de Leveland, lord of the manor of Leveland in the year 1206, gave the chapel of Leveland, with five acres of land, to the Benedictine monastery of St. Bertin, at St. Omers, the capital of Artois, in Flanders; but I think it could not be under the cognizance of their cell established at the adjoining parish of Throwley, as there is no mention made of it in the several taxations and valuations of its revenues.
In the 7th year of king Henry III. anno 1222, this church having been newly erected, was consecrated, but how long it continued among the revenues of St. Bertin's, I have not seen, but it is probable, till the 2d year of Henry V. when the possessions of all the alien priories throughout England were given to the king. After which, I have not found any account of it till the reign of queen Elizabeth, when it was come into the possession of the family of Sondes, of Throwley, in the descendants of which the patronage of this rectory has continued, in like manner as the manor of Leveland, down to the right hon. Lewis-Thomas, lord Sondes, the present patron of it.
This rectory is a discharged living in the king's books, of the clear yearly certified value of thirty pounds, the yearly tenths of which are eight shillings.
In 1598 the communicants here were twenty-one; in 1640 they were thirty-six, and the yearly value of it forty pounds."
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