File:All Saints Church - C18 monument - geograph.org.uk - 1395783.jpg

English: All Saints Church - C18 monument. to Anna Bettina Finch (d.1780), eldest daughter of Thomas Beevor, Esquire, of Hethel Hall, Hethel, Norfolk, and wife of William Finch Finch, Esquire, of Shelford, Cambrifgeshire. William Finch Finch was born as "William Finch Ingle", the son of Samuel Ingle, a linen draper and Citizen of London, and adopted the surname and arms of Finch in lieu of his patronymic, having inherited the manor of Little Shelford from his childless uncle William Finch jnr (d.1762). Arms: Argent, a chevron between three griffins passant sable (Finch (Earl of Aylesford)) impaling: Per pale or and argent, on a chief indented sable three lions rampant of the first Beevor (Burke, Sir Bernard, The General Armory, London, 1884, p.66 (Beevor Baronets of Hethel (1784)). Text from: RJH Griffiths, Mortlock and the Finch Connection, Havant 2000-8 (griffithsrobert at hotmail.com):

William Finch, who died in 1732, leaving the staggering sum for its day of £150,000, and who has a gravestone at St Mary the Great, the chief church of Cambridge, came to Cambridge from Hampton St in Dudley in Staffordshire in the year of the Glorious Revolution, 1688, and started an iron foundry and ironmongery business. He was an Independent in religion - indeed “a rigid Presbyterian” - and one of the Trustees of the Downing Place chapel. His family were already in iron in Staffordshire, his father (also William, d.1713) having started up in that business in Dudley in the late 1600s. By 1720 the Cambridge business was prospering to the extent that William was able to buy the ruin of the Austin Friars in Bene’t St from the University, tear it down, and build a “substantial mansion house” on the site. Cole, the antiquarian, lamented that Finch had “pulled down the good old gates”.

William’s son and heir William Finch jnr (d.1762), is commemorated by a plaque at the east end of the south aisle of St Mary’s. He acquired the manor of Little Shelford and restored and enlarged Shelford manor house, about five miles south of Cambridge. In 1745 he was elected Treasurer of an Anti-Jacobite subscription, which marks him as a Tory (unlike his father); he subscribed £25 towards enlisting volunteers to face Bonnie Prince Charlie’s invading army. In 1752 he was one of the Commissioners for Bridge Repairs in Cambridge. He died unmarried and the lordship of the manor of Little Shelford (but not the iron business) passed to his nephew William Finch Ingle, son of Samuel Ingle, a linen draper and Citizen of London, who in accordance with the bequest adopted the surname and arms of Finch in lieu of his patronymic, becoming "William Finch Finch". In 1777 William Finch Finch married Anne Bettina Beevor; The Mortlocks, Finches, Beevors, Lacons, Palmers and so forth were all connected in ways beyond what there is room to chronicle here; for instance in 1806 Juliana Bettina Beevor, daughter of Sir Thomas Beevor and great niece of William Finch Finch and Anne Bettina Beevor, married a Henry Hurrell, William Finch Finch being Sarah Mortlock’s third cousin. Samuel Ingle had married Elizabeth, daughter of William Finch snr (1667-1731). Besides her brother William jnr she had two unmarried sisters, of whom Sara jumped out of a window and killed herself in 1753 aged 54. At that age one might suspect the cause to be the diagnosis of incurable illness but we shall never know. The manor of Little Shelford remained in the Finch family until Rev. Henry Finch, who was Rector of Great Shelford - but he lived mostly in Cambridge - sold the lordship in 1837.

All Saints church > 1395771 - 1395779 is situated outside the village at the end of Church Lane. The tower was built from graded flints and a variety of other stones found locally, some presumably derived from abandoned Roman sites in the area. It dates from the 11th century and is a rare example in Norfolk of a Saxon square tower. It is unproportionally large compared with the rest of the building which has another unusual addition at its north-east end: a brick mausoleum built in 1730 for the Branthwait family > 1395778. The Miles Brainthwait monument in the chancel > 1395787 - made of alabaster - dates from the 17th century and is described as one of the grandest memorials of its period in the whole of Norfolk. The chancel was restored in 1737/38 and for a while this end of the church had sash windows which were replaced in 1882. The nave windows have wooden frames. The porch dates from the 15th century with the crow-stepped gable added later. The sundial > 1395775 above the entrance was made in 2000 by students of the Wymondham College.