Our village history

There have been people living in High Toynton for more than 1,000 years, and the church has been at its heart from the very start.

High Toynton history

In the Domesday book compiled in 1086 by William the Conqueror, both Todintune and Tedlintune are translated as ‘Toynton’, although which refers to High Toynton and which to Low Toynton isn’t clear. Both were substantial holdings:

Tedlintune: 4 carucates of land. 21 Freemen. 8 villagers and 3 smallholders have 8 ploughs. Meadow 400 acres

Compare this with Horncastle, which had more people and 2 mills, but only possessed 3 carucates, 9 ploughs and 100 acres of meadow. Stone age flints, Roman pottery and Medieval items have been picked up within and around the parish boundary.

Doubly Thankful village

High Toynton is one of only a few ‘Doubly Thankful’ villages in England - meaning that all of its residents who fought in WWI and WWII returned home.

The phrase ‘thankful village’ was coined by Arthur Mee in 1931. He discovered that, of all 16,000 English villages, only 32 were places ‘where no resident soldier was recorded as having died in the Great War’.

It is now currently accepted that there are 53 parishes in England and Wales where all serving personnel returned from the First World War and only 14 where all returned from both World Wars.

The Medieval Church

The earliest documented evidence of a church at High Toynton is in 1231 in a charter granted to the Bishop of Carlise by Henry III. Incorporated within the arch above the porch of the tower were the remains of two zigzag arches that dated from the Norman building.

Georgian Church (1772-1872)

The Norman edifice was demolished late in the 18th century and a new one, built of local sandstone, opened its doors to the faithful in 1772. The architectural plans still exist, with three faded early photographs showing the exterior and interior.

It was smaller than the previous church and there were seven box pews and a pulpit within the nave. The chancel was divided from the body of the Church by a wall with three arched openings behind which nestled two smaller box pews and the altar at the east end. However, this homely Georgian model did not last long. By 1850, restoration work was being carried out and just 22 years later the decision was made to demolish completely when a curate inspecting the false roof, fell through it!

Victorian Church (built 1872)

The Victorian church was designed by architect Ewan Christian, whose portfolio included the National Portrait Gallery. It took the church back to its original size, adding a vestry on to the north east side and a porch with a tower on the south west corner. The specification dictated that the foundations for the tower be deep enough to ensure there were no graves underneath. Despite the best attentions of the Victorian builders, the tower had to have braces fitted within several decades of its erection, so the findings of the forthcoming investigation with be interesting.

The tower

By the late 1980s, the church authorities discussed whether or not the tower should be demolished because of subsidence. The rural dean stated that in his opinion it would cost too much for the village to consider repairing it, which fired the blood of the villagers to start fundraising. With tremendous effort they eventually raised more than £30,000, underpinning the tower in 1989 with additional work undertaken a year or two later.

The bells

One of the two bells probably dates back to the 14th century. The other one was brought back to the church in 1934 after being used at the Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School in Horncastle since 1772. The date suggests that the Georgian church (built in 1772) only had room for bell, and so the second had been donated to the school.

Theophilus Caleb: vicar of High Toynton (1934-1943)

Born in Allahabad, Northern India in 1881 and son of a Presbyterian Minister, Caleb attended local university and also Potomac in USA. By 1902 he had become a barrister of Grays Inn, London but then attended Catholic Theological College and was ordained at St Albans in 1907. By 1926 when he became Vicar of Lumb in Lancashire, he had held 7 posts in 19 years.

Between 1927 and 1929 he introduced a series of changes and innovations of a “high Church” Catholic nature in his parish, falling out with many of his more non-conformist congregation. In September 1929 he implied that his choirmaster was living in sin as he had been married by a non conformist minister. Services became full of disruption, with a fair amount of the congregation drumming their feet on the pews, shouting out, singing different hymns and walking out en masse just prior to the sermon to hold their own alternative service outside, drowning out Caleb's attempts to continue. Police and national press attended (along with up to 2,000 onlookers) with an ever present threat of public disorder, police having to attend vestry meetings.

Things escalated so that July 1931 saw “one of the most violent scenes in a parochial dispute in post-victorian Britain".* It has to be said that Caleb's handling of his congregation was provocative and insensitive. He had an acerbic, adversarial and dictatorial manner. About midnight on Sunday 19th July his vicarage was besieged and all 19 windows broken. Caleb resorted to holding services in the middle of the night, aggravating the delicate situation.

In April 1932 a Commission of Enquiry was held lasting for 5 days. By far the most damaging allegations concerned Caleb's manner with 9 counts of verbal abuse of parishioners: he had used the pulpit to abuse, insult and provoke. He had referred to some parishioners as “savages”, “scum”, “Judas”, “dirt” and “chapel ranters!”

He was basically cleared but found “over-zealous”. He was finally moved from Lumb to assist for 2 years at Pendlebury. High Toynton with Mareham on the Hill was in the see of the Bishop of Manchester and he was moved there in 1934.

Throughout all this his English wife whom he had married about the time of his ordination, had remained very loyal to him and his values. Despite this and his advancing years, there is evidence to suggest that he had an affair with the daughter of Mr Dunham. She and the child was sent away, probably to South Africa.

In 1943 he was moved to Huttoft where Sir John Betjeman found him and wrote a poem celebrating the church and it's Indian vicar. He died in 1959 and is buried at Huttoft.

* C.S. Ford "Lumb: Race, Politics and Religion in a South East Lancashire Village 1926-31"