John Hyrne

The early ‘roots’ of the charity were established from the will of John Hyrne in 1689 when he bequeathed the profits from the use of 10 acres of land used as allotments for the poor and needy of the Parish.

Another piece of land was given from the Enclosure Act of 1845 is rented to a local person to keep his horses on, we were granted more land in the Tithe Awards of 1849 which is rented to a local farmer. The allotments comprising of 43 full plots and 8 half plots are still in use today so it is from these three pieces of land we obtain rent that funds the small grants that we are able to give our grants.

In the 17th century Costessey was only a very small village but Norfolk was part of an area second only to London in importance, most of the land was owned by Lord Stafford with Costessey Hall situated in 900 acres of superb parkland and somewhere in the remainder was John Hyrne who is listed as a gentleman but we know nothing more about him, all we can assume is that he had to be someone of great wealth and repute to leave us the large parcel of land plus thirty shillings to be given at Easter to the widows of Costessey. Today thirty shillings or one pound and fifty pence is a trivial amount but in those times it was a very large amount of money.

John Hyrne, his wife Mary and their daughter are all buried in the church of St. Edmund’s with the memorial stones in the aisle between the rows of pews, this again shows his importance. In that time Costessey was a very large and important Catholic religious area led by Lord Stafford who was responsible for the building of the Catholic church in the village.