| FARRINGDON | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lying three miles south of Alton, Farringdon had only two rectors between the years
1797 t0 1919, and the second of these was the eccentric Thomas Massey,
who served for 62 years. I say eccentric because of the memorial he left
in the village Massey's Folly! This is situated opposite the church and
it must be one of the oddest monstrosities in the country let alone the
county! With only the help of a carpenter, bricklayer and a labourere
Massey designed this follow or 'carbuncle' and it took them thirty years
to construct!
The folly is dominated by two towers that are decorated with dozens of terracotta panels that were the 'in thing' in the late 19th century and it contains 17 bedrooms. Until recently it served as the village school and just recently has been featured on BBC2 's Restoration Village where a group of buildings are nominated for a grant to be improved or preserved, unfortunately Massey's Folly was not chosen. In the churchyard of All Saints church there are several yews one of which has a certificate from the Conservation Foundation that has been signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and David Bellamy the famous biologist and it states that this tree is over 3,000 years old, which is not really unusual as yew has been well know for years to have the longest lifespan of any British tree and in Fortingall in Tayside there is one about 3,500 years old and is recorded in the Guiness Book of Records as the oldest yew in Great Britain. Gilbert White the naturalist and writer from Selborne was rector here before 1797 and served there for 25 years. Mary Windebank was an elderly lady who in 1758 was murdered here, A man broke into her house and stole her savings which she had hidden beneath her bed. She now sleeps in the graveyard and the memorial stone shows a four-poster bed with bags of money beneath and an old lady being pulled from the bed by a man, with the devil encouraging him It is difficult to read the inscription but it st arts 'Murder most foul.....' IMAGES OF FARRINGDON
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