HOLY TRINITY CHURCH - GREAT HOCKHAM
Holy Trinity is situated to the south of the village, across fields and within sight of Great Hockham Hall. The earliest part of the church can be reliably dated from the thirteenth century, although most of it dates from the fourteenth to fifteenth century.
Location and Early History
The village of Gt. Hockham is situated on the edge of the Brecks, an area of light, sandy soil. The A1075, a busy route between Thetford and Watton, once passed through the village but a by-pass has restored some tranquillity.
The name Hockham was written 'hocha' and 'parva hocha' in Domesday Book. The prefix could be from the Anglo Saxon 'heag' or German 'high' with 'ham 'denoting a village or house. However, Blomefield concluded that the name means 'the town in the dirt', from 'hoeham'.
In 1335, John, Duke of Norfolk, gave the manor to the Prior of Thetford; for three hundred years, until the Reformation, the church was in the patronage of the priory. Thetford Priory was a Cluniac order, which had its origins in France. The Cluniac monks had the reputation at that time of being the finest painters in France; they may have been responsible for the wall paintings at Holy Trinity.
By 1660 the manor had passed to Bacquiville Bacon; when he died in 1630 he left it to his eldest son of the same name. He in turn, on his death, left it to his eldest son, also Bacquille, who died at the age of seventeen in 1641, whereupon it passed to his younger brother, Henry, aged fifteen, who died in the same year. His death resulted in the estate being divided among Henry's three sisters: Mary, who, in 1662 had married Sir Robert Baldock, a Judge of the Common Pleas under King James; Phillipa, who married Robert Keddington; and Anne, who married Nicholas Rookwood, Esq. Robert Keddington bought out his sisters-in-law, and he and Phillipa lived here. After Phillipa's death the manor passed to Henry Keddington of Hockham.
Philip Ryley, Esq., Sergeant at Arms to the Lord Treasurer, Surveyor of the Queen's woods and forests south of the Trent, and one of the Queen's Commissioner of the Excise, bought the manor from the Keddington family in 1702; he built the present hall on the site of an Elizabethan manor house.
The manor later passed to the Dover family; James Dover sold it to Henry Samuel Partridge in 1810. In 1833 James Dover's son, Henry, married Louisa Partridge, daughter of Henry Samuel Partridge; the couple settled in Caston. Sadly Louisa died in 1834.
Henry Samuel Partridge and his descendants were benefactors to both church and village. Henry Samuel presented the church with the Victorian Communion set and the bells. A public elementary school was erected by H S Partridge in 1832. The school was handed over to the school board and a new classroom was added in 1882. It was enlarged again in 1896, when it could accommodate 152 children.
Henry Thomas Partridge held the manor in 1852 and it remained in the possession of this family until the estate was broken up in the 1930s. However, there are memorials in the church to the Partridge family until 1962. The estate was divided; the Forestry Commission bought some of the land, while the Trappes-Lomax family purchased the remainder of the estate.
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