Little Gidding community

In the 19th century associated buildings were restored; T. S. Eliot was attracted to it as an examplar of religious life in the Church of England, and subsequently made it prominent by his poem Little Gidding, one of the Four Quartets.

[3] John Ferrar, elder brother to Nicholas, was a merchant partner of Thomas Sheppard, who by the early 1620s was heavily in debt.

The purchase of Little Gidding from Sheppard was used by Nicholas to settle with the creditors, relying on Mary's money, and untangle John from the liability.

[4] In the aftermath of the 1622 collapse of the Virginia Company, and the loss of a large portion of their fortune, the Ferrar family moved to Little Gidding.

[6] In 1626, Nicholas Ferrar was ordained as a deacon by William Laud, then Bishop of St David's, in Westminster Abbey.

Antonia Fraser links suspicion of women having Latin, the deficit in female education caused by the dissolution of the monasteries in the previous century, and the gibes aimed at the community about being a "Protestant nunnery".

[14] The community put a large effort into producing examples of a distinctive type of book, a one-off illustrated gospel harmony.

Nicholas Ferrar had been an undergraduate at Clare College, Cambridge, where he was taught by Augustine Lindsell, graduating B.A.

[22] The poet George Herbert was public orator at Cambridge in the 1620s, and from 1626 had a prebendal residence at Leighton Bromswold, close to Little Gidding.

The landowner there was Katherine, Duchess of Lennox, widow of Esmé Stewart (died 1624) who had owned Little Gidding.

[22] A folio manuscript of the poetry collection by Herbert, which became known as The Temple, was made at Little Gidding by Anna and Mary Collett (perhaps with help), in order to apply for permission to publish.

[28] Charles I stayed at Little Gidding early in March 1642, as he made his way north, just before the outbreak of the English Civil War.