RUSHFORD WITH SNAREHILL

"RUSHFORD WITH SNAREHILL, a parish partly in the hundred of Guiltcross, county Norfolk, and partly in that of Blackburn, county Suffolk, 3½ miles S.E. of Thetford, its post town, and 7 from East Harling. The village, which is of small extent, is situated on the Little Ouse, which here separates the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. It formerly had a college, founded by Sir Edmund de Gonville in 1342, for a master and five priests. Its revenue at the Dissolution was valued at £85 15s. per annum, when it was given to the Howards. The parish includes the hamlets of Snarehill and Schadwell, with the mansion of Schadwell Park, the seat of the Buxton family. In the grounds of this mansion is St. Chad's Well, anciently much frequented by pilgrims on their route to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. The living is a donative curacy, and forms an exempt jurisdiction. The church, dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, is believed to have been the conventual church, and was originally a cruciform structure, of which only the tower and nave are remaining. At Schadwell Roman sepulchral urns have been found, and at Snarehill are tumuli, which mark the spot where a battle was fought between Edmund King of East Anglia, and the Danes, in 871."

Description(s) from The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868)
Transcribed by Colin Hinson © 2003