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KETTON
Chetene (xi cent.); Keten, Ketene (xii-xiii cent.).
Ketton is in a country of low hills and woodland on the north-west
slope to the River Welland. It covers 3,338 acres of land mostly
arable, but with a considerable amount of pasture, particularly on
the eastern side near the River Welland, which forms the eastern
boundary.
The River Chater skirts the east side of the village, and flowing north-east falls into the Welland at the north-east boundary of the parish.
Tixover is a chapelry in the ecclesiastical parish of Ketton.
The village is somewhat scattered, the main part of it being built
along the Uppingham to Stamford road about 3½ miles south-west of
Stamford. The cottages and inns, of which there are several, are
mostly of stone with stone roofs. The church stands in the south
part of the village with the Hall, a modern building, having a park
of over a hundred acres, to the south-west. The Hall belongs to the
Prebendal Estate, whose mansion house was described, when sold by
the Parliamentary Commissioners, as abutting upon the street, with a
watermill adjoining. Westward of the Hall is the Green.
The Priory, to the south of the church, marks the site of the chief
messuage of the manor held before the Dissolution by the Priory of
Sempringham. Blore states that the Greenham Manor house was situated
about a quarter of a mile south-east of the church above the Chater.
The remains of the house were then (1811) in a forlorn condition,
but exhibited evidences of very respectable antiquity in some of the
windows, in a curious piscina in the oratory, and in the arched roof
of timber of the hall. (fn. 1) This was probably the house that had
a chequered history of siege and counter-siege by rival claimants
before it left the Greenhams' possession. The hamlet of Aldgate lies
to the east of the village, and to the south-east is Greston,
consisting of Greston House, a line of stone-built and stone-roofed
cottages, and a brewery. Kilthorpe, with Kilthorpe Grange and its
ancient fishponds, is about a mile to the south of the village.
There are numerous quarries of building stone for which Ketton is
famous, (fn. 2) the most important being those of the Ketton Cement
Works at the east end of the village. There are also some
brickfields in the parish. There is an old windmill a little way
past Ketton Cemetery on the road to Collyweston. Along the road to
Uppingham are the smithy and chapel, and Rutland Brewery. The Grange
stands near the quarries north of the village, on a road branching
north-west from the Uppingham Road, and Ketton Grange is east of the
point of junction of these roads near the Chater.
The parish was inclosed in 1768, at which date about 2,200 acres
were still open fields in addition to 800 acres of common, heath,
(fn. 3) etc.
From: 'Parishes: Ketton', A History of the County of Rutland: Volume 2 (1935), pp. 254-265. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=66246 Date accessed: 28 May 2009.