By which ever road you enter Blunham, you must pass a bridge. Coming from Willington you enter the parish as you cross over the old railway bridge. From Great Barford, you enter as you pass mid-stream of the River Great Ouse for Barford bridge is half in Blunham and Barford lock completely so. Leaving Mogerhanger, the boundary is again the railway, at the site of the demolished bridge. From the Great North road, the entry point is the first little bridge on a bend, not, as one might think, the double humped Ivel bridge which so effectively filters out exuberant drivers before they reach the High Street.
The original settlement was probably chosen because the rivers half moat the northern end of the parish. The village is low-lying but the land is easily worked being mostly on gravel sub-soil though with some fen characteristics. Market gardening has resulted in many small parcels of land, now mostly owned by farmers from other parishes, some having been amalgamated into larger holdings, and so it is virtually devoid of farms, unusual for a large agricultural area.
Before the Conquest, the Manor was held by the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds and it passed eventually to the de Grey family of Wrest in the parish of Silsoe. A weekly market and annual three-day fair was started in 1314, indicating some prosperity, but this was extinguished by the Black Death, though by the 15th and 16th centuries there must have been some recovery judging by the size of the church. In 1614 Blunham’s only famous figure appears. John Donne, poet and preacher, Dean of St. Paul’s was also, and for a longer time, rector of Blunham, of which he retained the living, employing a curate. Three of Blunham’s six bells existed before 1624 so: “Send not therefore to know for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.” could have been inspired by a bell which hangs there still in the 16th century ironstone tower.
The church is large and interesting. The east base of the tower dates back to 1100 and since then much building, re-building, additions and alterations have taken place. There is a canopied altar tomb in the north wall of the chancel, apparently intended as an Easter Sepulchre, rare outside East Anglia, and an attractive screen of the Jacobean period with wrought iron bolts, designed to be rattle-proof. The fine old Baptist chapel in the High Street was built in 1751 when it was of a rather lower elevation. It was subsequently raised and given a gallery with cast-iron pillars.
Of the secular buildings, the oldest is the Old Manor House in Park Lane facing the church. It has a wealth of beams and a fragment of fine panelling but due to extensive changes over the years it has rather an odd appearance. The Ragged Staff nearby, in contrast, looks rather picturesque, though its facade was repaired during the 1920s. Inside are enormous beams and there are many signs of change of use – as its name implies, it was once a pub. The Old Rectory (1870) is by John Usher, an eminent Bedfordshire architect. It is high Victorian Gothic, reminding one of those far off summer days with tea and croquet on the lawn. The other two larger houses, at opposite ends of the village, are The Grange in Grange Road, which is Edwardian, and Blunham House, off Station Road, dating from the late 18 century. The bulk of the village is the usual Bedfordshire mixture with studwork, thatched cottages, Victorian brick and slate, some good council houses of the thirties and a fair quantity of architectural whims of the sixties. There was significant development at the top of the hill in the 2000’s, bringing new architecture to the village.
Footpaths are few, one goes along the Ivel to Tempsford from Grange Road and another to Sandy from the weir near the church. However, the village streets afford some pleasant walking.
History
It is believed that some time before the Norman Conquest a Saxon with a name such as Bluwa settled on a stretch of pasture land between the Ouse and its tributary the Ivel and to this ham he gave his name and at Domesday the Norman land surveyors called it Blunham. Domesday mentions three manors held by Abbott Baldwin of St. Edmundsbury, Eudo Dapifer and Countess Judith, a niece of William the Conqueror. The manor of Blunham descended, through Judith’s daughter Matilda to the Earls of Pembroke and eventually through the female line to the family of the de Grays of Ruthin, one of whom was created Earl of Kent in 1465. The Earls of Kent lived occasionally at Blunham and the 7th Earl, Charles, died in 1620 in the Old Manor House which faces the Church. The barony descended through his daughter Susanna Longueville, whose tomb is in the Church, but the – earldom went to Anthony Grey, Rector of Burbage in Leicestershire. Through female heirs the manor and patronage of the living descended through the Lucas of Crudwell and Cowper families until eventually the patronage was bestowed upon Balliol College. Oxford, in the 1930’s.
Nowadays the Church is often referred to as “St. James or St. Edmund.” The latter is undoubtedly the true dedication. It is found in documents as early as 1501, was in use in the last century and is used in official documents.
St. Edmund (King and Martyr)-was King of the East Angles who were defeated by the Danes at Thetford in 869.He was later captured by them and on refusing to share his kingdom, for they were heathens, he was shot to death by arrows in the manor of St. Sebastian. His feast day is 20th November.
St. James day is 25th July, a more seasonable date for celebrating a village feast and this continued to the early years of this century. At some stage in the last century the village feast was found to be a suitable occasion for a patronal festival and the patron saint of the feast became the patron saint of the Church.
The right to hold a market and fair at the festival of St. James was granted in 1315 to John, Lord Hastings who was the Lord of the Manor at the time.
Until 1860 the parish of Blunham included Moggerhanger which in that year was formed, into a District Chapelry.
Originally Blunham lay in the diocese of Lincoln but was transferred to Ely in the last century and then to St. Albans in 1914.
Although Blunham is still an individual parish it has been since 1978 part of the united benefice of Blunham with Tempsford and Little Barford. It is part of the Ivel Group of Parishes of which the others are Cople, Willington, Great Barford, Roxton, Moggerhanger, Northill, Old Warden and Caldecote. The Order-in-Council which established the Ivel Group also declared that the rectory for the benefice should be in Blunham.
The list of rectors, now affixed to the west wall of the nave, was compiled by Canon C. W. Foster of Lincoln in 1909.
Dr. John Donne, preacher (“No man is an island entire of itself”) and metaphysical poet (‘Batter my heart, three personed God’), was born in 1572 into a family of staunch Catholics. He .later became an Anglican and Dean of St. Paul’s from 1621 to his death in 1631 and was at the same time Rector of Blunham and presented Blunham Church with the silver gilt chalice with his inscription upon it and this is a treasured possession today.
The church building dates from the 14th century with the exception of the tower which is older. Its present appearance however dates mainly from 1862 when a major restoration was carried out. The woodwork dates from that time except for the pulpit, the screen in the tower and the pews at the back of the nave.
The 14th century plan of the church seems to have provided for chapels on each side of the chancel and nave. One of these may have been appropriated to the Brotherhood of the Holy Trinity which is known to have existed in Blunham at that period.
During the restoration of 1862 some alabaster fragments were found in the wall beneath the east window. They are thought to have been part of the reredos and may indicate that the church suffered considerable damage during the Reformation. The fragments are on display in the Lady Chapel.