. The Victoria history of the county of Bedford. Natural history. Meppershall Church from South-east now occupied as three cottages. It is apparently an early seventeenth-century building, and has on one of the three projecting gables on its east front a thistle in raised plaster work. Behind it lie the interest! rg eeries of earthworks known as the Hills, of which a plan is given elsewhere in this history.'" ^ Information from Bd. of Agric. (1905), 1" Bids, i, 296. ' Chan. Inq. 43 Edw. Ill, Add. Noa, No. 6'j, ' Inq. 18 Jas. I, vol. 383, No. 88. < Beds, i, 2
. The Victoria history of the county of Bedford. Natural history. Meppershall Church from South-east now occupied as three cottages. It is apparently an early seventeenth-century building, and has on one of the three projecting gables on its east front a thistle in raised plaster work. Behind it lie the interest! rg eeries of earthworks known as the Hills, of which a plan is given elsewhere in this history.'" ^ Information from Bd. of Agric. (1905), 1" Bids, i, 296. ' Chan. Inq. 43 Edw. Ill, Add. Noa, No. 6'j, ' Inq. 18 Jas. I, vol. 383, No. 88. < Beds, i, 255. The manor of Meppershall extended into Herts, as late as 1575, after which date no separate mention is made of lands in Herts. ; in 1331 Robert of Meppershall held three cottages and 9 acres Inq. 5 Edw. Ill (ist Nos.), No. 54) ; in 1453 the holding amounted to 3 mes- suages {Cal. Inq. (Rec. Com.) iv, 253), and remained at that amount (Chan. Inq. 38-9 Hen. VI, No. 50; ibid. 22 Edw. IV, No. 30 i Exch. Inq. 4 & 5 Hen. VII, file 3, No. 6 j ibid. 9 Hen. VII, file 1218, No. 2 ; Chan. Inq. 8 Hen. VIII, vol. 31, No. 30) until 1557, At the north-east of the village is the rectory, the house itself only dating from 1792, but occupying an old site, and partly surrounded by a moat, with several fishponds, only one of which now contains water, on the west. A spring in the garden, which doubtless once sup- plied the moat, is still in use ; and to the south is a large tithe-barn and farm-yard. A drawing of the former rectory-house is preserved, showing the moat perfect and a carefully laid-out garden ; while in one of the register books is a copy of Latin elegiac verses, composed about 1706 by a former rector, giving a vivid idea of the charms of the house two centuries ago. To the north-east of the village, about a mile dis- tant, is Chapel Farm, on the site of St. Thomas's Chapel Manor, formerly belonging to Chicksands Priory ; an ancient pigeon-house stood
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