Thornham Magna

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article (or section) may need to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article, especially its section layout, and relevant internal links. (help)
This article has been tagged since November 2006.

Thornham Magna, sister village Thornham Parva, essentially Big Thorny Village & Little Thorny Village (nearby is Thorndon). Both villages lie about 3 miles from Eye and close to the A140 main road from Norwich to Ipswich, the county towns of Norfolk & Suffolk.

The twin villages of Thornham Magna and Thornham Parva lie within a mile or so of each other through wooded country lanes. The surrounding area is mostly arable farming & cattle on the water meadows through which the River Dove flows. The combined population in 2001 was about 170. Both villages are mentioned in the Magna Carta in 1215.

Magna is the larger of the villages with a pub, a forge workshop and village hall while Parva has a rare thatched church but only a few shattered houses. Thornham Magna’s church is the St Mary Magdalene & includes a window which has glass by Morris and Co and the figures (Christ flanked by two Mary's) by Burne Jones is said to be one of the finest Pre Raphael windows in Suffolk.

Thornham Parva’s church is St Marys. Both churches are from around the 14th Century but both also have parts that date from Norman times. However, Thornham Parva's church's also has a very rare 12ft long retable – a painted panel at the back of the altar – thought to have been made for Thetford Priory in the 1330s. The Henniker family historically owned most of the land in & around these villages, the last Lord Henniker dying in 2004. St Mary Magdalene is considered the Henniker’s church. Both have war memorials that name the locals that died in World Wars I & II.

Its main pub, The Four Horse Shoes, has existed on that site in one form or another since 1150 & most of the houses in the village are between 100 to 600 years old including a lot of oak-beamed, mud-walled straw-thatch roofed Tudor farm houses. The sculptor William Coles currently lives & works here.