While the village was wholly agricultural until the 19th century, there are originally expensive gravestones of the local minor gentry in the churchyard, two of which are dedicated to their naturalised black servants, Benjamin and Cotto Blake who both died in 1781. These bear the inscription "Davo aptio, Argo fidelior, ipso Sanchone facetior". During this long period since the conquest the wealth of the local rector and his bishop was great: William Grocyn was rector 1504–1513 and was an Oxford classical academic who corresponded regularly with Erasmus and Lewis Atterbury (1707–31) expended much of the large parish revenues on having the large tower rebuilt.