URPoint Details
The village is in the Tendring One Hundred. The earliest time Thorpe is mentioned is 1119 when a charter of the Abbey of St John the Baptist at Colchester refers to the tithes of Torp. In 1147 there was a church, the sole relic of this building is now the font base.
Who was pretty Kitty Canham? Kitty was the only daughter of Robert and Judith Canham of Thorpe. Robert was a prosperous man, living in the Tudor manor house of Beaumont Hall. In 1745 a lonely incumbent by the name of Henry Gough arrived in the village. After a year of courtship, he and Kitty were married. It was a stormy marriage and last only three years, before Kitty ran away to London. There she caught the eye of a rich young man named John Primrose. The second wedding of Kitty took place in secret to avoid John’s father, Lord Rosebery, serving a writ of lunacy on him. Kitty died in Verona in 1752 and on her deathbed confessed to John that she was a bigamist and begged him to take her body home to Thorpe. John set out on the journey but when the boat was searched at Brightlingsea, the finding of Kitty’s embalmed body aroused the authorities and they arrested him. He was locked up with the coffin in the vestry
- Type:
- Landmark