Gresham, Norfolk
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gresham is a village in northern Norfolk in the United Kingdom, a few miles south west of Cromer.
The parish church is All Saints, Gresham, and it contains one of the famous East Anglian seven sacrament fonts. Historically, the church had its own Rector, but it now shares a clergyman with neighboring villages.
Much of the parish of Gresham belongs to Richard Batt, lord of the manor of eighteen villages. The estate at Gresham has been in his family since 1620.
Gresham was the site of a famous clerical battle in the 1940s. Although it was then seen as an Anglo-Catholic parish, the inside walls of the church are now bare and whitewashed, due to the efforts of the squire of the day, Colonel Batt, who was a determined Protestant, while his parish priest was an Anglo-Catholic. The Colonel demanded that all high church decorations be removed, the clergyman refused, and Batt took the matter to a Consistory Court and won. The case became famous, but it was one of the last of its kind.
The village is also the ancestral home of the famous Norfolk family of Gresham, whose members included Sir John Gresham, founder of Gresham's School, and Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of Gresham College and the Royal Exchange.
