St Mary The Virgin Great Brington

Picture One – St Mary’s Great Brington 

Kim and I lived in the neighbouring village of Little Brington for two years and visited the Church of St Mary a number of times.  

A short walk between the villages often with Chas our Bernese mountain dog found us at the Althorp Coaching Inn for refreshments, a bite or company.

I also remember attending the memorial service of police crime prevention colleague and friend Chris Dry in the church.  Chris had a large if secret military and Middle East background and I will always remember the dark suits with no-names that attended the service that day.  The story among locals is that Diana is indeed buried in the church alongside her father as that was her wish.  Further tales tell of a depth in the pond of only 18 inches, precluding her burial on the island inside the grounds of Althorp.

Further tales tell of the mausoleum brickwork mortar inside the church being damp the day following the internment.   Kim and I were both in Great Brington as recently as November 2014 and chewed the fat with an old friend in the pub.  To all intents and purposes he could have been sat there since we left over eight years previously.  Great Brington is a village in the Daventry district of the county of Northamptonshire, England. The village, in the civil parish of Brington, has a population of about 200. The parish church of Great Brington is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin and St John.

In 1508, John Spencer from Wormleighton in Warwickshire purchased the estate of Althorp outside Great Brington with its moated house and several hundred acres of farmland.  He had grazed sheep here from the 1480s. In 1508, impressed by the quality of the land, he eventually bought it and rebuilt the house.  In 1511 he made further purchases to acquire much of the surrounding countryside, including the villages of Little Brington and Great Brington as well their parish church of St Mary the Virgin, from Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset.

Just outside the village is Althorp, the home of the Spencer family and Diana, Princess of Wales. Several members of the Spencer family are buried at Great Brington church, including Diana's father the 8th Earl Spencer, who died in 1992.  The death of Diana had quite an effect on the village - the village pub was renamed from "The Fox and Hounds" to the "Althorp Coaching Inn" and the previously sleepy post office gained currency exchange facilities following the large increase in tourism to the area.

The Macmillan Way long distance footpath passes through Great Brington. The disc jockey and television presenter Jo Whiley is from the village.