The Manors of Tasburgh

Although the Manor of Rainthorpe owned land in Tasburgh, the two Tasburgh manors which dated from Saxon times, were what became known as Uphall Manor and Hunt's Manor. Following the Norman Conquest, the larger of the two manors was awarded to a family which later assumed the name of Taseburgh or de Taseburgh. They also acquired land in Suffolk at St. Peter South Elmham where they built St. Peters Hall, moving there in 1220. In 1280 Roger de Taseburgh sold his manor in Tasburgh to Sir Richard de Boyland, from the "lost" medieval village of Boyland near Hempnall. Sir Richard is recorded as paying 6 pence a year to King Edward I for the right to administer local justice, including the use of a ducking stool and a common gallows. The merged manors were then sold a few years later to Richard de Uphall, and became known as the Manor of Tasburgh Uphall with Boyland. He was almost certainly the same man as Richard Uppehalle, who helped finance the building of the now demolished chapter house of Norwich Cathedral.

The original site of the moated manor house, and its adjoining chapel of St. Michael, lay on the far side of the river Tas opposite Tasburgh Grange, commanding the division of the river between the branch to Tharston and the Hempnall branch. There is also a record of a document in 1289 referring to a right of way passing between Sir Richard de Boyland's court-yard and his chapel of St. Michael to enable access to a nearby aldercar but, based on a diversion of the parish boundary and medieval pottery remains, it appears that at some point in the following century a new manor house was built to the south of the Hapton road, near what is now Hall Farm. After many changes of owners, including the Appleyard and Bumpstede families who were wealthy Norwich merchants, the manor was acquired in 1542 by Sir Thomas Gresham, financier to four Tudor monarchs and founder of the Royal Exchange in London.

From 1315 Hunt's manor was owned by Dunmow Priory which had been founded by the sister of the Lord of the Manor of Hempnall and held other property in the area. After the Dissolution of the Monastries it became the property of the Crown, but in 1570 it was granted by Queen Elizabeth I to Sir Thomas Gresham, and for the next 350 years the merged manors became known as Tasburgh Uphall with Boyland and Hunts. Hunt's manor house is believed to have been at or close to Old Hall Farm, and when that property was bought by Philip Stannard in 1801, he referred to his purchase of a manor house at Tasburgh, even though the Lordship of the Manor was by then in the ownership of the Preston family by virtue of the Will of William Jermy of Bayfield Hall, near Holt.

William Jermy had no children so under the terms of his Will he left his lands and titles including the manors of Tasburgh and Stanfield, between Hethel and Wymondham, to the male line of his wife's family, the Prestons of Beeston Hall, between Wroxham and Stalham. However he specified that any member of the Preston family who inherited his estate had to change his name to that of Jermy, which is how the son of the Rev. George Preston, Rector of Tasburgh, became Isaac Jermy of Stanfield Hall. He was murdered in 1848 together with his son, by his estate bailiff James Rush, and the estates passed to his infant daughter Sophia. In 1868 she married Colonel Reginald Thorsby Gwyn, a nephew of Commander William Gwyn of Tasburgh Hall, who thereby became the Lord of the Manor of Tasburgh; in those days a wife's assets still automatically passed to her husband on marriage. Col. Gwyn duly took up residence at Stanfield Hall which remained in his family until it was sold in 1920, but the Manorial Court records of copyhold land transfers in the village from 1625 until then are still held by the Norfolk Record Office at County Hall under reference MC 1827/96-102. When matched with the 1818 Enclosure Award and the 1840 Tithe Apportionment Award also held at the Norfolk Record Office, these provide a useful record of early ownership for a number of the older properties in the village.