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Collyweston

Collyweston
The Collyweston Slater pub
Collyweston is located in Northamptonshire
Collyweston
Collyweston
Location within Northamptonshire
Population514 (2011 Census)
OS grid referenceSK996030
Civil parish
  • Collyweston
Unitary authority
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townStamford
Postcode districtPE9
Dialling code01780
PoliceNorthamptonshire
FireNorthamptonshire
AmbulanceEast Midlands
UK Parliament
List of places
UK
England
Northamptonshire
52°36′59″N 0°31′45″W / 52.61639°N 0.52917°W / 52.61639; -0.52917

Collyweston is a village and civil parish in North Northamptonshire, about three miles southwest of Stamford, Lincolnshire, on the road (the A43) to Kettering. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 514.[1]

Geography

The village is on the southern side of the Welland valley east of Tixover. The River Welland, at the point nearby to the northwest, is the boundary between Rutland and Northamptonshire. Ketton and Collyweston railway station was closed in 1966.

Collyweston is currently served by buses on the Stamford–to–Peterborough via Duddington route. The Jurassic Way and Hereward Way pass through the village to the north, crossing the Welland at Collyweston Bridge, near Geeston.

The A47 road passes through the parish to the south, with Collyweston Great Wood to the south. The road from the A47, continuing in a straight line to the village is called Kingscliffe Road.

Nature reserve

The local Wildlife Trust has a fifteen-acre nature reserve at Collyweston Quarries where Lincolnshire limestone was quarried, to the north of the A43. This has the pyramidal orchid, common dodder, greater knapweed, common rock-rose, common bird's foot trefoil, and clustered bellflower. Birds found there include the European green woodpecker and glowworms are found there in the summer.

There is also an SSSI at Collyweston Great Wood.

History

St Andrew's Church, Collyweston

The village's name means 'West farm/settlement'. Colin is a pet-form of Nicholas who held the manor in the 13th century.[2] An alternative name for the village may be "Colyns Weston", in 1396.[3]

A pub on Main Road is called 'The Collyweston Slater', owned by Everards Brewery. New houses have been built down a road called 'Collyns Way'. The parish church is St Andrew's, a Grade II* listed building.

John Stokesley (1475–1539), an English clergyman who was Bishop of London during the reign of Henry VIII was born in Collyweston.[4] In the late sixteenth century, the place gave its name to the manner of wearing the mandilion 'Colley-Weston-ward' for unknown reasons.

Collyweston Palace

Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby

Collyweston Palace was the home, in later life, of Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), the mother of Henry VII.[5] In 1498, though still married, she made a vow of chastity and chose to live at Collyweston.[6]

The household of Margaret Beaufort at Collyweston, her chapel, and New Year's Day festivities at Collyweston with Princess Cecily were described for Mary I by Henry Parker, 10th Baron Morley,[7] who had served Margaret Beaufort as a teenager.[8][9]

New furnishings for Lady Margaret Beaufort's apartments at Collyweston were embroidered with her heraldic badges of roses and the portcullis by Sebastian Mussheka in 1498, and she donated textiles and vestments to the parish church at Collyweston, including a then old-fashioned green damask cope.[10] Margaret Tudor (1489–1541) came to Collyweston in 1503 on her way to join her husband James IV of Scotland. One of her attendants, Elizabeth Zouche married Gerald FitzGerald, 9th Earl of Kildare (1487–1534) at the palace,[11] and six Spanish dancers performed a morris dance.[12]

In 1506, a priest, John Stokesley, was brought before Lady Margaret Beaufort's manor court charged with the crime of baptising a cat as part of a charm to find treasure.[13] An inventory of Margaret Beaufort's wardrobe at Collyweston was made after her death in 1509. She had 20 fur-edged black gowns – some with trains, and some without them, a style known as "round".[14]

Edward VI granted the manor to his sister Elizabeth in 1550.[15] In 1566, the palace was extensively repaired.[16] New windows for the Queen's lodging were glazed with the royal arms and badges. A new timber banqueting house was built.[17] Elizabeth I came to Collyweston on her progress on 29 June.[18] According to Dominique Bourgoing, on 25 September 1586, Mary, Queen of Scots, travelled past the chasteau Collunwaston on her way to Fotheringhay.[19]

Charles I granted the manor to a Scottish courtier of James VI and I, Patrick Maule.[20] The building was dismantled in about 1640, leaving little trace.[21] In 2023, its location was confirmed using ground-penetrating radar to find the main cluster of buildings, and the footings of walls were unearthed.[22][23]

"Collywest"

The term 'collywest' (or 'colleywest', or 'collywesson') is a derivative of Collyweston that may be used to describe anything a bit crooked, awry, wobbly, or generally disordered, or meaning opposite, wrong way, or contrary. It has been suggested that when slate had been quarried in Collyweston, the good-quality, even pieces were sold, leaving the crooked poorer-quality pieces to use for the village's houses, making for very disordered rooftops.[24] In the northern US, the term 'galley-west' is widely held by US dictionaries to be a derivative of 'collywest'.[25]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Civil Parish population 2011". Neighbourhood Statistics. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 1 July 2016.
  2. ^ "Key to English Place-names".
  3. ^ Plea Rolls of the Court of Common Pleas; National Archives; CP 40/541; http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT6/R2/CP40no541a/bCP40no541adorses/IMG_0466.htm; third entry from the bottom
  4. ^ Pollard, Albert (1898). "Stokesley, John" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 54. pp. 403–405.
  5. ^ Collyweston House: Royal Palaces, Simon Thurley
  6. ^ Retha M. Warnicke, "Lady Margaret Beaufort: A Noblewoman of Independent Wealth and Status", Fifteen Century Studies, 9 (1984), pp. 220-221.
  7. ^ Lorraine Attreed & Alexandra Winkler, "Faith and Forgiveness: Lessons in Statecraft for Queen Mary Tudor", Sixteenth Century Journal, 36:4 (Winter, 2005), pp. 971-2, 982.
  8. ^ Fiona Kisby, "A Mirror for Monarchy: Music and Musicians at the Household Chapel of the Lady Margaret Beaufort", Early Music History, 16 (1997), p. 211.
  9. ^ Michael K. Jones & Malcolm G. Underwood, The King's Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge, 1992), p. 158.
  10. ^ Susan Powell, "Textiles and Dress in the Household Papers of Margaret Beaufort", Medieval Clothing and Textiles, 11 (Boydell, 2015), pp. 145-8.
  11. ^ Michael K. Jones & Malcolm G. Underwood, The King's Mother (Cambridge, 1992), p. 114.
  12. ^ Michael Heaney, The Ancient English Morris Dance (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2023), p. 14.
  13. ^ David Cressy, Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England: Tales of Discord and Dissension (Oxford, 2000), p. 175.
  14. ^ Maria Hayward, Dress at the Court of Henry VIII (Maney, 2007), pp. 84-86.
  15. ^ Howard Colvin, The History of the King's Works, 4:2 (London: HMSO, 1982), p. 67.
  16. ^ Howard Colvin, The History of the King's Works, 3:1 (London: HMSO, 1975), p. 79: Records of the Office of the Auditors of Land Revenue, 1 (List and Index Society, 1998), pp. 13, 16.
  17. ^ Howard Colvin, The History of the King's Works, 4:2 (London: HMSO, 1982), p. 67.
  18. ^ Elizabeth Goldring, Faith Eales, Elizabeth Clarke, Jayne Elisabeth Archer, John Nichols's The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, 1 (Oxford, 2014), p. 453.
  19. ^ William Kelly, Royal Progresses and Visits to Leicester (Leicester: Samuel Clarke, p. 311.
  20. ^ Howard Colvin, The History of the King's Works, 4:2 (London: HMSO, 1982), p. 67.
  21. ^ "Collyweston", An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the County of Northamptonshire, Volume 6, Architectural Monuments in North Northamptonshire, London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1984, p. 33
  22. ^ Maddy Baillie, "Collyweston Palace uncovered by local history society", Stamford Mercury, 18 November 2023
  23. ^ Solly, Meilan. "Amateur Historians Unearth a Long-Lost Tudor Palace Visited by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I". Smithsonian Magazine.
  24. ^ Ó Muirithe, Diarmaid (2011). Words We Don't Use (Much Anymore). Dublin: Gill Books. ISBN 978-0-7171-4810-3.
  25. ^ "galley-west". Merriam-Webster.

Further reading