The name of this village in Domesday Book is Metingaham; and in subsequent records
it is written Metynham, and finally Mettingham. It is a compound of three Saxon
words, signifying a village or dwelling place situated near low meadows.
The higher part of this parish lies on a range of hills forming the southern boundary
of the valley of the Waveney, and commands a pleasant prospect over the meadows
below, and the opposite hills on the Norfolk side. The soil is rich, and the air
salubrious, bracing, and healthy.
At the time of the Norman Survey, Mettingham was returned among the possessions
of Earl Hugh. It had then a church endowed with twenty acres of glebe, and was an
improving estate.
In the reign of Edward I., Sir John de Norwich was lord, and obtained from that
monarch, in 1302, a grant of free-warren in Mettingham, Shipmeadow, Redesham, &c.
In the ninth of Edward II., Walter de Norwich held it, and in the reign of Edward III.
it was the manor of Sir John de Norwich, the same who built the castle.
He died in
1361, when the manor devolved to his grandson, also named Sir John, who dying at
Mettingham Castle, in 1373, appointed his body to be buried at Raveningham, by the
side of his father, Sir Walter, "there to rest, till it could be removed to the new church
of Norton-coupe-cors," to the building of which he gives £450. Leaving no issue, his
cousin, Catharine de Brews, inherited as next heir, being daughter and heiress of Thomas
de Norwich, brother to the founder of the castle. (fn. 1) In the reign of Richard II., Catharine
de Brews, being then a nun, at Dartford, in Kent, conveyed this manor to the college in
Mettingham Castle, (fn. 2) lately removed thither from Raveningham, in Norfolk.
It continued
to augment its possessions till the reign of King Henry VIII., who granted it, in 1541,
to Sir Anthony Denny. By an inquisitio post mortem, taken at Bury on the 16th of
April, in the fourth of Edward VI., Sir Anthony was found to die on the 10th of
September preceding, seized, inter alia, of the castle and manor of Mettingham, held of
the King in capite. (fn. 3)
In the fifth of Elizabeth, Henry Denny held them, with license
of alienation to Nicholas Bacon; and in the eighth of Elizabeth, this
Nicholas occurs as
lord and patron of the church; with right of free-fishery in the waters
of Bungay, Shipmeadow, Barsham, and Beccles, with license of alienation
to Sir Robert Catlin. This
change, however, seems never to have taken place, as the Bacons were
lords in the
twenty-sixth of the same reign, (fn. 4) and retained possession till 1675, when they transferred
the manor and castle to John Hunt, Esq., whose grandson, Tobias Hunt, dying in the
following century without issue, these estates fell to Mary and Grace Hunt, his coheiresses.
James Safford, of Ipswich, Esq., married Grace, the younger sister, and was the father
of the Rev. James Safford, late Vicar of Mettingham, who died without issue; and of
John Safford, who married Martha Smith, and was the father of Samuel Safford, Esq.,
who married Mary Cole, and held, in right of his grandmother, a moiety of the castle
and estate, and was the father of the Rev. James Cutting Safford, who resides at the
castle, and is the sole lord of the manor, having derived the other moiety of this estate
from his great uncle, Burham Cutting, the son of Mary Hunt, the eldest coheiress of
Tobias Hunt, aforesaid, by her husband, Burham Cutting, Esq. The Rev. James Cutting
Safford, who thus holds Mettingham castle and manor, married Louisa, daughter of
the late Rev. James Chartres, B.D., and has issue.
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