Sutton-cum-Granby

Sutton-cum-Granby (known sometimes as Sutton in the Vale) is a small Nottinghamshire hamlet in the Vale of Belvoir.

Location and facilities
Sutton is approximately midway between Elton on the Hill and Granby, 14 miles from Nottingham, 14 miles from Melton Mowbray, 12 miles from Grantham, and 118 miles from London. It lies in the parish of Granby. The population is currently about 60. In 1742 it was 124, in 1853 152, and in 2001 43.

The village has no shops, but there are other businesses: a builder's, a repair garage, and farms. There is a weekday, daytime public transport service, with a bus running every hour to Nottingham via local villages. The nearest railway station at Aslockton, with trains to and beyond Nottingham and Grantham. There has never been a public house in what was until recently a predominantly Methodist community.

History
The manor of Sutton, along with at least five others in Nottinghamshire, was held in the 1330s by Thomas de Furnival the elder. By 1520, Sutton belonged to Sir John Savage, but his son, also John, confessed to the murder of Sir John Pauncefort. Henry VIII pardoned him provided that he paid the sum of £4000 to expiate his crime. As a result, the land passed to the Manners family, created earl of Rutland in 1525, and then to their descendants, the earls and from 1638 dukes of Rutland. Much of the village and many of the farms were still, until the 1920s, part of the estate of the Duke of Rutland centred on Belvoir Castle, which is a prominent feature of the eastern skyline. During the English Civil War Oliver Cromwell fought a battle less than a mile from Sutton; human bones being discovered there even in the 1960s.

Sutton is said to be mentioned in the Domesday Book as having a church dedicated to St Ethelburga (or Aubrey), which has vanished. However, the purported existence of a church with the same dedication in nearby Langar parish may point to a confusion of some kind. Sutton's small Primitive Methodist Chapel was erected in 1860, but it has been closed for worship since 1995.

The Victorian historian Esdaile described the castle in Sutton as a fortress. William Stevenson described it as "earthworks surrounding a moated homestead". This castle was sited halfway between Sutton and Granby, where there later stood a windmill, pulled down in 1879. A Manuscript Roll of Sutton from about 1586 was sold in 1935.

During the Second World War, Sutton received evacuees from Nottingham and later London. Electricity was brought to the village in 1948, and mains water in 1956.