FRYERNING parish adjoins and includes more than a third of the small town of Ingatestone, which has a Post Office and a Station on the Eastern Counties Railway, 23 miles N.E. of London. Its church and some of its houses are on an acclivity about 1 mile N.W. of Ingatestone. It contains 707 inhabitants and 3830 acres ofland, including 180A. of wood and a rich tract of pasture grounds.
The manor, with a great part of the soil, belongs to Wadham College, Oxford, by gift of the founder, Sir Nicholas Wadham. William Kortwright, John Dawson, and Charles Grant, Esqrs. , have estates and neat houses in the parish, and here are several smaller owners, chiefly copyholders.
The Church (St. Mary) is a brick structure of the 15th century, and has a strong tower and five bells. The stair- case, which led to the rood-loft, still remains, and the fabric has recently been thoroughly repaired. The Rectory, valued in K.B. at £9, and in 1831 at £292, is in the patronage of the Warden and Fellows of Wadham College, and incumbency of the Rev. H. W. Blandford, M.A. The tithes were commuted, in 1843, for £385 per annum, and there is a good Rectory House. The churchyard commands extensive views, and contains a vault and tomb of the Disney family, of the Hyde, surmounted by a stone column. Half of the parish was given by Gilbert de Montfichet to the Knight HospitalIers of St. John, of Jerusalem; and its name is supposed to be a corruption of Friar’s-ing. St. Leonard’s is the pleasant seat of Capt. William Kortwright. For distribution in bread the poor parishioners havethe following yearly sums, viz.:-£3 fromBright’s, and £1.10s. from D’Oyley’s Charities, both paid by the Corporation of the Sons of Clergy; £3 from £100 Three per Cent. Consols, left by Rosamond Bonham, in 1805 ; and £3 . 10s. from £100 Three-and- a-half per Cent. Reduced Annuities, left by Robert Sorrell, M.D., in 1805. The late W. G. Coesvelt, Esq. , of St. Leonard’s, in 1841, left £250, in trust, to apply the interest in clothing the deserving poor.
(Fryerning Directory is included with Ingatestone.)