Horseheath

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Horseheath is a hamlet in Cambridgeshire, England, situated a few miles south-east of Cambridge, between Linton and Haverhill, on the A1307 road.

Horseheath was known to the Romans, and it had for a while a fine house in a great park, but both are now gone. Now it has a few old houses, to keep company with its 600 year old church containing Norman fragments. The fine nave, a blaze of light from great transomed windows, is 15th century, and its lofty height is crowned by a noble roof with a great span, with massive moulded beams and carved bosses. The oak chancel screen also dates from the 15th century and still has traces of painting in its panels. There is a 16th century sundial. It has a 500 year old font, and treasured brasses and monuments of lords and ladies of its greater days. They were the Audleys and the Alingtons. A fragment of old glass in the church has the shield of the Audleys, one of whom distinguished himself at the Battle of Poitiers, in 1356. A brass portrait in the church shows William Audley, who was alive at the time, standing with his feet on a lion, magnificent in armour and with a very long sword. Near him is the brass of Sir Robert Alington, Knt., laid to rest in May 1552. (Sir Robert had been married to Margaret, daughter of Sir William Coningsby, Knt., King's Justice).

The Alingtons held the manor here, and one of them was slain on Bosworth Field. His son, Giles, was Master of Ordnance to King Henry VIII, and lies in splendour with his son, one above the other, both in armour, heads on helmets and feet on hounds. The son outlived the father by 64 years. There is another Giles Alington of Shakespeare's day on an impressive alabaster monument with his wife and their six children, he in slashed breeches and armour, she in a ruff and hooped skirt. The Alingtons thrived under the Stuarts and had the privilege of handing to the King his first drink at coronations.

"The Alingtons lived at Horseheath Hall. The house was rebuilt in 1663-5 by architect Sir Roger Pratt; (Vitruvius Britannicus is wrong in assigning the house to Webb). It was a Classical eleven-bay house with a three-bay pediment, quoins, hipped roof, balustrade and belvedere on the roof. It was further enlarged in 1688, but pulled down in 1777. The splendid wrought-iron gates went to St John's College and Trinity College, Cambridge, and the rectory at Cheveley."