Catching up..

OK, I know it’s been a few days since I wrote a ‘proper’ blog entry.

It has been hard to find that slot of time. Take yesterday for example.

I didn’t’ leave work until 6pm. The Man and I get to Canada Water train station only to discover that there are no trains running between there and Crystal Palace.

So plan B swings into operation. That means getting the next train to Clapham Junction  and then a Southern train back to Crystal Palace. Which we did, but that meant we didn’t walk in the door at our little flat until well after 7:30pm. So by the time tea was cooked and devoured I hardly had time to t write more than a line or two.

Last weekend we were able to go to Croyland, which is where my Hall ancestors came from. So I have again walked where they walked.

I think that my three times great grandparents, John Hall and Martha Wyment married at the abbey back in 1796. The present parish church is actually the north isle of what was once a magnificent abbey.

Croyland Abbey was a monastery of the Benedictine Order in Lincolnshire, sixteen miles from Stamford and thirteen from Peterborough. It was founded in memory of St. Guthlac early in the eighth century by Ethelbald, King of Mercia, but was entirely destroyed and the community slaughtered by the Danes in 866.

Refounded in the reign of King Edred, it was again destroyed by fire in 1091, but rebuilt about twenty years later by Abbot Joffrid. In 1170 the greater part of the abbey and church was once more burnt down and once more rebuilt, under Abbot Edward. From this time the history of Croyland was one of growing and almost unbroken prosperity down to the time of the Dissolution. Richly endowed by royal and noble visitors to the shrine of St. Guthlac, it became one of the most opulent of East Anglian abbeys; and owning to its isolated position in the heart of the fen country, its security and peace were comparatively undisturbed during the great civil wars and other national troubles.