248 LINDRIDGE, PENSAX, KNIGHTON, AND NEWNHAM.

now boast of having one of the prettiest modern churches in the county. It is in the Decorated style. The Vicar gave £1,000 towards it, Sir Wm. Smith presented the stone, timber, &c., and the Dean and Chapter gave a handsome donation. Altogether it cost about £3,000. A good school has been erected and endowed with £800 by the present Vicar, the income for the time being to go to Worcester Infirmary should the school ever be given up or improperly conducted.

Lindridge belonged to the Church of Worcester, having been appropriated to that priory for providing three more monks and tapers before the shrine of St. Wulstan, in Worcester Cathedral. It was at one time a place of some importance, and Henry III granted it a market - long ago numbered with the past. Among the manors in the parish were Moore and Newnham, at which for ages the priors of Worcester held their periodical courts as lords of the manors. We read of Prior Moore giving on one occasion "rewards to ye wyffs (wives or women) of Burraston, Pensax, Moore, and Newenh'm, to make mery amongs them;" and the bailiff of Newnham gave to the same prior as his New Year's gift (a regular custom with the tenantry of those days) eight partridges and "dysshe of trowts and greylyngs." Henry VIII gave the manor of Moore to the Dean and Chapter of Worcester on condition of maintaining ten poor men who had been "bruised in war or maimed by old age," who, together with the other dependents of the church, were to have each three yards of cloth annually, at 3s. 4d. a yard (equal to 30s. at present), for their garments, and to be fed with broken meat from the Dean's table. This was afterwards compounded for by a payment of £5 each, and is now lost.

Among the ancient families of Lindridge were the Pencils, or Penhulls, and the Lowes, who took their names from places or hamlets in this parish. In the thirteenth century the representatives of both these families fell into the hands of the usurious Jews of Worcester, were by them placed in prison, and severely ill-treated, and would probably have lost their