Æthelstan Mannessune

Æthelstan Mannessune (died c. 986) was a landowner and monastic patron in late 10th-century Anglo-Saxon England, coming from a family of secularised priests.

[1] Æthelstan's recorded lands lay in Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Bedfordshire, with "outlying" [Hart] estates in Norfolk and Lincolnshire.

[1] According to the Liber Benefactorum, Æthelstan was married to a kinswoman of Oswald, one time Bishop of Worcester and Archbishop of York.

[4] Godric, Ælfwaru and Ælfwyn (as well as Ælfae) all inherited estates from Æthelstan in addition to a fishery, while Eadnoth became a monk at Worcester, before becoming Abbot of Ramsey and Bishop of Dorchester.

[6] Subsequently his widow agreed to pass her manor of Slepe (what would become St Ives)[2] to Ramsey Abbey, even though her late husband had left this to their daughter Ælfwyn.

Modern Ely cathedral with the river Great Ouse in the foreground; though most of the Fenland was drained in the early modern period and Ely is no longer an island, the landscape retains some watery features