"The remains of a medieval village cross situated on Beachamwell village green. The cross, which is Listed Grade II, includes the lower part of the cross shaft supported on a socket stone. The socket stone which forms the base of the cross is aligned NNW-SSE. It stands 0.33 metres above the ground surface and measures 0.7 metres square. The surface is weathered, but shows traces of chamfering around the upper edge. The surviving part of the cross shaft is rectangular in section, measuring 0.34 metres by 0.17 metres, and is 0.56 metres in height, set WSW-ENE into a slightly larger rectangular socket in the upper surface of the base. The cross formerly stood at the opposite end of the green, 100 metres to the east of its present position. In the mid-19th century it was moved from there to a site approximtely 670 metres to the north east, where it was set up as a glebe boundary marker and the letter G incised on what is now the south east face of the socket stone. It was returned to the green in 1981. Scheduled."
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Glebe (also known as church furlong, rectory manor or parson's close(s)) is an area of land within an ecclesiastical parish used to support a parish priest.
In the Roman Catholic and Anglican church traditions, a glebe is land belonging to a benefice and so by default to its incumbent. In other words, "glebe is land (in addition to or including the parsonage house/rectory and grounds) which was assigned to support the priest".
The word glebe itself is from Middle English, from the French « glèbe » (originally from Latin gleba or glaeba "clod, land, soil").
Glebe can include strips in the open field system or grouped together into a compact plot of land. Tithes were in early times the main means of support for the parish clergy but glebe land was either granted by any lord of the manor of the church's parish (sometimes the manor would have boundaries coterminous with the parish but in most instances it would be smaller), or accumulated from other donations of particular pieces of land. Occasionally all or part of the glebe was appropriated, devoted or assigned to a priory or college. In the case where the whole glebe was given to impropriators they would become the lay rector(s) (plural where the land is now subdivided), in which case the general law of tithes would resume on that land, and in England and Wales chancel repair liability would now apply to the lay rectors just as it had to the rector.
The amount of such land varied from parish to parish, occasionally forming a complete glebe farm. From 1571 onwards, information about the glebe would be recorded at ecclesiastical visitations in a "glebe terrier" (Latin terra, land) by the incumbent of the benefice. It could also entail complete farms, individual fields, houses (messuages), mills or works. A holder of a benefice could retain the glebe for his own use, usually for agricultural exploitation, or he could "farm" it (i.e., lease it, a term also used) to others and retain a rent as income.
Glebe associated with the Church of England ceased to belong to individual incumbents as from 1 April 1978, by virtue of the Endowments and Glebe Measure 1976. It became vested on that date, "without any conveyance or other assurance", in the Diocesan Board of Finance of the diocese to which the benefice owning the glebe belonged, even if the glebe was in another diocese. But see 'Parsonages & Glebe Diocesan Manual 2012' for current legislation."
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