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SUTTON, a parish in the hundred of BIGGLESWADE, county of BEDFORD, 1¾ mile (S.) from Potton, containing 369 inhabitants. The living is a rectory, in the archdeaconry of Bedford, and diocese of Lincoln, rated in the king's books at £20, and in the patronage of the President and Fellows of St. John's College, Oxford. The church is dedicated to All Saints. Here were the seat and royalty of the celebrated John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who conferred Sutton and Potton upon Sir Roger Burgoyne and his heirs, by a curious laconic deed in doggerell verse, which is preserved among the ancient records in the Arches, Doctors' Commons. The manor-house was burned down in 1826. There is a fine chalybeate spring near the parsonage-house. The learned Bishop Stillingfleet was rector of Sutton, about the middle of the seventeenth century, where he wrote his Origines Sacræ.
[A Topographical Dictionary of England - Samuel Lewis - 1831]
The 1851 Census Index for Sutton can be found in the 1851 Index to Census of Bedfordshire, Volume 3, Book 2 available from the Bedfordshire Family History Society.
Church of England
The church of All Saints is a building of stone, in the Early English and Decorated styles, consisting of chancel, nave of four bays, aisles, south porch and an embattled western tower, containing 4 bells and a clock : the north aisle or Burgoyne chapel contains some magnificent monuments of the Burgoyne family, together with hatchments, flags and other funereal; the most important of these, erected to John Burgoyne, 1604, consists of a marble monument, 24 feet in height and 16 feet long, with a life-sized recumbent effigy and an inscribed tablet: the chancel retains its piscina and sedilia, and is separated from the nave by an oak screen: the font is Norman : the east window and several others are stained, and include one in the north chancel to Barbara, wife of the Rev Charles Dethick Blyth B.D. rector from 1830: there are 400 sittings. The register dates from the year 1690.
[Kelly's Directory - Bedfordshire - 1898]
Church of England
The parish record transcripts for All Saints are available on microfiche for the period 1690-1812 from the Bedfordshire Family History Society.
The Marston charity of £21 yearly (origin unknown), is derived from land, and is distributed as follows:- one-third to the schools, one-third as head money to the married poor and the remainder to the maintenance of the church and the packhorse bridge, which, spinning a small stream, gives entrance to the village. Sutton Park the property of Sir J. M. Burgoyne, bart. and now the residence of Lady Barbara Smith & Gerald Dudley Smith esq. ; the mansion is a beautiful edifice in the Palladian style, in a well-wooded park of 134 acres ; in the park is an eminence called John o' Gaunt's Hill.
[Kelly's Directory - Bedfordshire - 1898]
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[Last updated 16 March 2003 Martin Edwards]