Situated on a small rise above the River Nene, 5 miles South of the market town of Oundle, the population of the civil parish of Thorpe Achurch at the 2011 census was 421.

[1] The parish includes the Grade I listed property Lilford Hall and the Grade II* listed Church of St. John the Baptist, an early and late 13th-century Anglican church restored and enlarged by architect William Slater in 1862.

Subsequently named Asechirce in the Domesday Book of 1086 with land held mainly by Ascelin de Waterville, a Norman knight after whom the adjoining village of Thorpe Waterville is named.

Ownership of the land passed through the Dukes of Exeter in the 14th century with Henry VII granting them to his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort.

[3] Edward VI awarded the manors to Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, and they remained in the possession of his descendants the Earls of Exeter, until 1773, when the estates were sold to Thomas Powys of Lilford.