Custhorpe / Culestorpa / Custhorp / Sculatorpa

Custhorpe has an entry in the Domesday survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/TF7813/custhorpe/] [accessed 5 December 2013], very small, with only four households in it. Blomefield (1805-1810) writes: "C[usthorpe] Was a village in the Saxon age, and at the survey called Culestorpa, and Sculatorpa, as seated on a shoal or shallow water; it stood on the south side of the river Nar, directly opposite to Westacre, but was in South Greenhow hundred; the Lord Tony being lord of it at the survey, and so being as a beruite to Westacre", and mentions a chapel here dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket built as part of a "convent": "a large chapel now in ruins called Becket's chapel, dedicated to that Archbishop, where, on July 7, was an annual fair; at the north-east point of this chapel was an house or cell, wherein a custos and a monk or two dwelt, and performed service; by this, not only pilgrims used to pass to the Lady of Walsingham, but many also came on purpose to pay their devotion here, where likely there might be some particular relict of that Archbishop. In 1506, I find mention of a pilgrimage to St. Thomas of Westacre. (fn. 2) It was built chiefly of flint, was 60 feet long, and 30 broad, and was inclosed as a cemetery with a wall of flint." [NB: we have no information on whether a medieval font or stoup existed in it, though the latter would be most likely].