Bedingham
Bedingham is a village and civil parish in the South Norfolk district of Norfolk, about 11 miles south of Norwich. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 216; the church of Bedingham St Andrew is one of 124 existing round-tower churches in Norfolk. Media related to Bedingham at Wikimedia Commons Website with photos of Bedingham St Andrew, a round-tower church http://www.south-norfolk.gov.uk/democracy/bedingham_parish.asp
East of England
The East of England is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of NUTS for statistical purposes. It was created in 1994 and was adopted for statistics from 1999, it includes the ceremonial counties of Bedfordshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and Suffolk. Essex has the highest population in the region, its population at the 2011 census was 5,847,000. Bedford, Basildon, Southend-on-Sea, Ipswich, Colchester and Cambridge are the region's most populous towns; the southern part of the region lies in the London commuter belt. The region has the lowest elevation range in the UK. North Cambridgeshire and the Essex Coast have most of the around 5% of the region, below 10 metres above sea level; the Fens are in North Cambridgeshire, notable for the lowest point in the country in the land of the village of Holme 2.75 metres below mean sea level, once Whittlesey Mere. The highest point is at Clipper Down at 817 ft, in the far south-western corner of the region in the Ivinghoe Hills. Basildon and Harlow, with Stevenage and Hemel Hempstead, were main New Towns in the 1950s and 1960s, with much industry located there.
In the late 1960s, the Roskill Commission considered Thurleigh in Bedfordshire, Nuthampstead in Hertfordshire and Foulness in Essex as a possible third airport for London. The East of England succeeded the standard statistical region East Anglia; the East of England civil defence region was identical to today's region. England between the Wash and just south of the town of Colchester has since post-Roman times been and continues to be known as East Anglia, including the county traversing the west of this line, Cambridgeshire; the inclusion of Essex as part of East Anglia is open to debate, notably because it was a Saxon kingdom, separate from the kingdom of the East Angles. Essex, despite meaning East-Saxons formed part of the South East England, as did Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, a mixture of definite and debatable Home Counties; the earliest use of the term is from 1695. Charles Davenant, in An essay upon ways and means of supplying the war, wrote, "The Eleven Home Counties, which are thought in Land Taxes to pay more than their proportion..." cited a list including these four.
The term does not appear to have been used in taxation since the 18th century. East Anglia is one of the driest parts of the United Kingdom with average rainfall ranging from 450 mm to 750 mm; this is because low pressure systems and weather fronts from the Atlantic have lost a lot of their moisture over land by the time they reach Eastern England. However the Fens in Cambridgeshire are prone to flooding. Winter is cool but non-prevailing cold easterly winds can affect the area from the continent, these can bring heavy snowfall if the winds interact with a low pressure system over the Atlantic or France. Northerly winds can be cold but are not as cold as easterly winds. Westerly winds bring milder and wetter weather. Southerly winds bring mild air but chill if coming from further east than Spain. Spring is a transitional season that can be chilly to start with but is warm by late-April/May; the weather at this time is changeable and showery. Summer is warm and continental air from mainland Europe or the Azores High leads to at least a few weeks of hot, balmy weather with prolonged warm to hot weather.
The number of summer storms from the Atlantic, such as the remnants of a tropical storm coincides with the location of the jet stream. The East tends to receive much less of their rain than the other regions. Autumn is mild with some days being unsettled and rainy and others warm. At least part of September and early October in the East have warm and settled weather but only in rare years is there an Indian summer where fine weather marks the entire traditional harvest season; the most deprived districts, according to the Indices of deprivation 2007 in the region are, in descending order, Great Yarmouth, Luton and Ipswich. At county level, after Luton and Peterborough, which have a similar level of deprivation, in descending order there is Southend-on-Sea Thurrock; the least deprived districts, in descending order, are South Cambridgeshire, Mid Bedfordshire, East Hertfordshire, St Albans, Rochford, Huntingdonshire, Mid Suffolk, North Hertfordshire, Three Rivers, South Norfolk, East Cambridgeshire and Suffolk Coastal.
At county level, the least deprived areas in the region, in descending order, are Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire, with all three having a similar level of deprivation Essex. The region has the lowest proportion of jobless households in the UK – 0.5%. In March 2011 the region's unemployment claimant count was 3.0%. Inside the region, the highest rate is Great Yarmouth with 6.2%, followed by Peterborough and Southend-on-Sea on 4.7%. In the 2015 general election, there was an overall swing of 0.25% from the Conservatives to Labour, the Liberal Democrats lost 16% of its vote. All of Hertfordshire and Suffolk is now Conservative; the region's electorate voted 49% Conservative, 22% Labour, 16% UKIP, 8% Liberal Democrat and 4% Green. Like other regions, the division of seats favours th
Civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government, they are a territorial designation, the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of ecclesiastical parishes which played a role in both civil and ecclesiastical administration; the unit rolled out across England in the 1860s. A civil parish can range in size from a large town with a population of about 75,000 to a single village with fewer than a hundred inhabitants. Eight parishes have city status. A civil parish may be known as and confirmed as a town, neighbourhood or community by resolution of its parish council, a right reserved not conferred on other units of English local government. 35% of the English population live in a civil parish. As of 31 December 2015 there were 10,449 parishes in England; the most populous is Weston super Mare and those with cathedral city status are Chichester, Hereford, Ripon, Salisbury and Wells.
On 1 April 2014, Queen's Park became the first civil parish in Greater London. Before 2008 their creation was not permitted within a London borough. Wales was divided into civil parishes until 1974, when they were replaced by communities, which are similar to English parishes in the way they operate. Civil parishes in Scotland were abolished for local government purposes by the Local Government Act 1929, the Scottish equivalent of English civil parishes are community council areas, which were established by the Local Government Act 1973; the Parish system in Europe was established between the 8th and 12th centuries and in England was old by the time of the Conquest. These areas were based on the territory of one or more manors, areas which in some cases derived their bounds from Roman or Iron Age estates. Parish boundaries were conservative, changing little, after 1180'froze' so that boundaries could no longer be changed at all, despite changes to manorial landholdings - though there were some examples of sub-division.
The consistency of these boundaries, up until the 19th century is useful to historians, is of cultural significance in terms of shaping local identities, a factor reinforced by the adoption of parish boundaries unchanged, by successor local government units. There was huge variation in size between parishes, for instance Writtle in Essex was 13,568 acres while neighbouring Shellow Bowells was just 469 acres, Chignall Smealy 476 acres; until the break with Rome, parishes managed ecclesiastical matters, while the manor was the principal unit of local administration and justice. The church replaced the manor court as the rural administrative centre, levied a local tax on produce known as a tithe. In the medieval period, responsibilities such as relief of the poor passed from the Lord of the Manor to the parish's rector, who in practice would delegate tasks among his vestry or the monasteries. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the power to levy a rate to fund relief of the poor was conferred on the parish authorities by the Act for the Relief of the Poor 1601.
Both before and after this optional social change, local charities are well-documented. The parish authorities were consisted of all the ratepayers of the parish; as the number of ratepayers of some parishes grew, it became difficult to convene meetings as an open vestry. In some built up, areas the select vestry took over responsibility from the entire body of ratepayers; this innovation allowed governance by a self-perpetuating elite. The administration of the parish system relied on the monopoly of the established English Church, which for a few years after Henry VIII alternated between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, before settling on the latter on the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558. By the 18th century, religious membership was becoming more fractured in some places, due for instance to the progress of Methodism; the legitimacy of the parish vestry came into question and the perceived inefficiency and corruption inherent in the system became a source for concern in some places.
For this reason, during the early 19th century the parish progressively lost its powers to ad hoc boards and other organisations, for example the loss of responsibility for poor relief through the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. Sanitary districts covered England in Ireland three years later; the replacement boards were each entitled to levy their own rate in the parish. The church rate ceased to be levied in many parishes and became voluntary from 1868; the ancient parishes diverged into two distinct, nearly overlapping, systems of parishes during the 19th century. The Poor Law Amendment Act 1866 declared all areas that levied a separate rate: C of E ecclesiastical parishes, extra-parochial areas and their analogue, chapelries, to be "civil parishes". To have collected rates this means these beforehand had their own vestries, boards or equivalent bodies; the Church of England parishes, which cover more than 99% of England, became termed "ecclesiastical parishes" and the boundaries of these soon diverged from those of the Ancient Parishes in order to reflect modern circumstances.
After 1921 each ecclesiastical parish has been the responsibility of the parochial church councils. In the late 19th century, most of the ancient irregularities inheri
Alburgh
Alburgh is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The village lies 16 miles south of Norwich; the earliest evidence of settlement at Alburgh is from the Mesolithic era. A Bronze Age barrow near the church was excavated in the 19th century. Little has been recovered from the Roman or Saxon periods. However, there are plentiful. Parts of the church of All Saints, date back to the 13th century; the noted church architect Richard Phipson restored it in 1876, adding "pinnacles with little flying buttresses" and reworking the chancel. Today the church holds a service every Sunday as part of the Earsham benefice, its ring of eight bells is among the oldest in Norfolk. The churchyard is a conservation area; the former Methodist place of worship was converted into a dwelling in the 1960s. The local public house, the Kings Head closed in 1956. Homersfield Bridge, which crosses the River Waveney between Alburgh and Homersfield, opened in 1870, making it the oldest surviving concrete bridge in Britain.
Homersfield railway station, on the Waveney line and within the parish of Alburgh, opened in 1860 and closed in 1953. Apart from the church and the bridge, there are 17 other Grade II listed buildings in Alburgh, most of them residential. John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Alburgh in 1870–72: "ALBURGH, a parish in Depwade district, Norfolk, it has a post office under Harleston, a fair on 21 June. Acres, 1,512. Real property, £3,699. Pop. 587. Houses, 130; the property is much subdivided. The living is a rectory in the Diocese of Norwich. Value, £395.* Patron, St. John's College, Cambridge; the church has a large Norman porch. There are a national school, charities £240." The civil parish, which includes the hamlets of Piccadilly Corner and Alburgh Street, has an area of 6.42 sq. km. In 2001 it had a population of 349 in 149 households; this increased to a population of 410 at the 2011 Census. For local government, it has a parish council, it falls within the district of South Norfolk.
Alburgh is on the No. 84 Konectbus service between Norwich and Harlestone, which runs in the daytime on Monday to Friday. The village is served by Alburgh with Denton CE VC Primary School. Among the regular events at the modern Village Hall are monthly film shows. There are sports clubs for tennis and carpet bowls. Alburgh has two convenience stores. There is a brewery in Tunbeck Road, an ice cream maker and garment printing firm. Media related to Alburgh at Wikimedia Commons Alburgh, Norfolk village website Alburgh in the Domesday Book
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, sometimes referred to as Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world; the Irish Sea lies between Great Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world, it is the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017. The UK is constitutional monarchy; the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 1952, making her the longest-serving current head of state.
The United Kingdom's capital and largest city is London, a global city and financial centre with an urban area population of 10.3 million. Other major urban areas in the UK include Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire conurbations, Greater Glasgow and the Liverpool Built-up Area; the United Kingdom consists of four constituent countries: England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Their capitals are London, Edinburgh and Belfast, respectively. Apart from England, the countries have their own devolved governments, each with varying powers, but such power is delegated by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which may enact laws unilaterally altering or abolishing devolution; the nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the UK, being Crown dependencies with the British Government responsible for defence and international representation. The medieval conquest and subsequent annexation of Wales by the Kingdom of England, followed by the union between England and Scotland in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, the union in 1801 of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There are fourteen British Overseas Territories, the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, encompassed a quarter of the world's land mass and was the largest empire in history. British influence can be observed in the language and political systems of many of its former colonies; the United Kingdom is a developed country and has the world's fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It has a high-income economy and has a high Human Development Index rating, ranking 14th in the world, it was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The UK remains a great power, with considerable economic, military and political influence internationally, it is sixth in military expenditure in the world. It has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946.
It has been a leading member state of the European Union and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. The United Kingdom is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Council of Europe, the G7, the G20, NATO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Trade Organization; the 1707 Acts of Union declared that the kingdoms of England and Scotland were "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain". The term "United Kingdom" has been used as a description for the former kingdom of Great Britain, although its official name from 1707 to 1800 was "Great Britain"; the Acts of Union 1800 united the kingdom of Great Britain and the kingdom of Ireland in 1801, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the partition of Ireland and the independence of the Irish Free State in 1922, which left Northern Ireland as the only part of the island of Ireland within the United Kingdom, the name was changed to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Although the United Kingdom is a sovereign country, Scotland and Northern Ireland are widely referred to as countries. The UK Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom; some statistical summaries, such as those for the twelve NUTS 1 regions of the United Kingdom refer to Scotland and Northern Ireland as "regions". Northern Ireland is referred to as a "province". With regard to Northern Ireland, the descriptive name used "can be controversial, with the choice revealing one's political preferences"; the term "Great Britain" conventionally refers to the island of Great Britain, or politically to England and Wales in combination. However, it is sometimes used as a loose synonym for the United Kingdom as a whole; the term "Britain" is used both as a synonym for Great Britain, as a synonym for the United Kingdom. Usage is mixed, with the BBC preferring to use Britain as shorthand only for Great Britain and the UK Government, while accepting that both terms refer to the United K
Benefice
A benefice or living is a reward received in exchange for services rendered and as a retainer for future services. The Roman Empire used the Latin term beneficium as a benefit to an individual from the Empire for services rendered, its use was adopted by the Western Church in the Carolingian Era as a benefit bestowed by the crown or church officials. A benefice from a church is called a precaria such as a stipend and one from a monarch or nobleman is called a fief. A benefice is distinct from an allod, in that an allod is property owned outright, not bestowed by a higher authority. In ancient Rome a benefice was a gift of land for life as a reward for services rendered to the state; the word comes from the Latin noun beneficium, meaning "benefit". In the 8th century, using their position as Mayor of the Palace, Charles Martel, Carloman I and Pepin II usurped a large number of church benefices for distribution to vassals, Carolingians continued this practice as emperors; these estates were held in return for oaths of military assistance, which aided the Carolingians in consolidating and strengthening their power.
Charlemagne continued the late Roman concept of granting benefices in return for military and administrative service to his empire. Thus, the imperial structure was bound together through a series of oaths between the monarch and the recipient of land, he ordered and administered his kingdom and his empire through a series of published statutes called capitularies. The Capitulary of Herstal distinguished between his vassals who were styled casati and non-casati, those subjects who had received a benefice from the hand of the king and those who had not, towards the end of Charlemagne's reign it appears that a royal vassal who had satisfactorily fulfilled his duties could always look forward to the grant of a benefice in some part of the Empire. Once he had received a benefice, he would take up his residence on it. In the year 800 Pope Leo III placed the crown of Holy Roman Emperor on the head of Charlemagne; this act caused great turmoil for future generations, who would afterward argue that the emperor thereby received his position as a benefice from the papacy.
In his March 1075 Dictatus Papae, Pope Gregory VII declared that only the pope could depose an emperor, which implied that he could do so just as a lord might take a benefice away from a vassal. This declaration inflamed Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and furthered the friction caused in the Investiture Conflict; the expanded practice continued through the Middle Ages within the European feudal system. This same customary method became adopted by the Catholic Church; the church's revenue streams came from, amongst other things and profits arising from assets gifted to the church, its endowment, given by believers, be they monarch, lord of the manor or vassal, also upon tithes calculated on the sale of the product of the people's personal labour in the entire parish such as cloth or shoes and the people's profits from specific forms of God-given, natural increase such as crops and in livestock. The Catholic Church granted buildings, grants of land and greater and/or lesser tithes for life but the land was not alienated from the dioceses.
However the Council of Lyons of 566 annexed these grants to the churches. By the time of the Council of Mainz of 813 these grants were known as beneficia. Holding a benefice did not imply a cure of souls although each benefice had a number of spiritual duties attached to it. For providing these duties, a priest would receive "temporalities". Benefices were used for the worldly support of much of its pastoral clergy – clergy gaining rewards for carrying out their duties with rights to certain revenues, the "fruits of their office"; the original donor of the temporalities or his nominee, the patron and his successors in title, held the advowson. Parish priests were charged with the temporal care of their congregation; the community provided for the priest as necessary as organisation improved, by tithe. Some individual institutions within the church accumulated enormous endowments and, with that, temporal power; these endowments sometimes concentrated great wealth in the "dead hand" of the church, so called because it endured beyond any individual's life.
The church was exempt from all taxes. This was in contrast to feudal practice where the nobility would hold land on grant from the king in return for service service in war; this meant that the church over time gained a large share of land in many feudal states and so was a cause of increasing tension between the church and the Crown. The holder of more than one benefice known as a pluralist, could keep the revenue to which he was entitled and pay lesser sums to deputies to carry out the corresponding duties. By a Decree of the Lateran Council of 1215 no clerk could hold two benefices with cure of souls, if a beneficed clerk took a second benefice with cure of souls, he vacated ipso facto his first benefice. Dispensations, could be obtained from Rome; the benefice system was open to abuse. Acquisitive prelates held multiple major benefices; the holding of more than one benefice is termed pluralism. An Engli
Claxton, Norfolk
Claxton is a small village 8.5 miles south-east of Norwich, south of the River Yare, between Rockland St. Mary and Loddon in South Norfolk, England. In the 2001 census it contained 85 households and a population of 244, the population increasing to 291 at the 2011 census. Just to the south lie the small villages of Ashby St Mary and Carleton St Peter. To the east of the village are the remains of Claxton Castle, which dates from the mid-14th century, licences to crenellate having been granted in 1340 and 1376. Situated on private land in the grounds of Claxton Manor House it comprises a massive brick-and-flint wall 130 feet long with six bastions. Claxton Manor House itself has a Victorian façade; the Manor was bought in 1946 by Major Derek Allhusen, who achieved fame as a horseman winning team gold and individual silver at the 1968 Summer Olympics. Derek Allhusen died in 2000. To the south-west of the village lies Claxton Church, it is thought that the Saxon settlement which would have been built around it moved down to the marsh edge in the Middle Ages.
The church has a thatched scissor-beam roof with basketweave sarking. The flint tower dates from the 14th century, though much restored. Between 1926 and 1936 a narrow gauge railway ran the 1 mile from Claxton Manor Farm in the village north to the south bank of the River Yare. In 1928 it was extended south to Staines Barn, just east of the church, it was used to transport sugar beet bound for the factory at Cantley, loaded onto wherries at the river. It used a converted Model T Ford as motive power. A windmill once stood at the eastern end of the village on Mill Lane, it was demolished in 1945. A Spitfire crash-landed in Claxton Marsh to the north of the village in the same year and is now on display at the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum. Claxton no longer has a pub, post office or school, although a combined shop and petrol station survived until 2002, it does have a village hall. The current hall was opened in 1984 and is home to a social club founded in 1987 and licensed for the sale of alcohol.
Claxton is served by bus route 85 operated by Our Bus providing three services a day into Norwich via Rockland St Mary and Kirby Bedon. It lies on National Cycle Route 1 on its route from Norwich to Beccles via Loddon. Founded in 2004, Claxton Opera stages annual performances in the Old Meeting House; this was once a Strict and Particular Baptist chapel erected in the 1750s and could hold 500 in its heyday, but closed for worship in 1943. It is now a private house but the living room becomes a theatre for two or three months a year when the annual opera is staged. South of the village on the banks of Carleton Beck lies Ducan's Marsh, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and one of the richest areas of unimproved wet grassland in East Norfolk. Claxton: A Thousand Years of Village Life Media related to Claxton, Norfolk at Wikimedia Commons Ordnance Survey Pathfinder map of Claxton Claxton Church Claxton Castle Claxton Smock mill Ducan's Marsh Claxton Opera https://archive.is/20120410115344/http://www.claxtonpc.norfolkparishes.gov.uk/
Media related to Ashby St Mary at Wikimedia Commons
