Jackie Crowther sent me the following "potted history" (to use her own words). She said she had put it together from various sources, and she gave her permission for me to use it here.
When Swain the son of Azor, son of Lefsi, was Lord of Stoke at the time of the Norman invasion, the Domesday Book said that the Saxon Lord held 21 houses with families of "villains and bordars" and the total value of the houses was 10 shillings a year. The village had a water mill worth 13 shillings and 4 pence a year, arable land and meadows and a priest who cared for the souls of the villagers, as well as tilling his own plot of land.
The village church of Stoke in the fast part of the 11 th century probably stood on the same spot as the present church. It must have been a small building, thick walled and dark, with narrow semicircular headed windows, most of them without glass, with wooden or oiled canvas shutters to keep out the elements. Swain, the Saxon Lord of Stoke died without heirs and was succeeded by a Norman noble. The Manor of Stoke passed from one family to another. It acquired the name "Bruerne" from Sir William de Briwere (or Bruere), a friend of both King Richard the Lionheart and his brother King John.
De Briwere held the Manor of Stoke as well as those of Sitlehanger (Shutlanger) and Aldrintone (Alderton) from William de Warenn, Earl of Surrey. He was also a substantial landholder in many other parts of England and was granted a royal licence to build three castles on his estates in Hampshire, Somerset and Devonshire. When King Richard the Lionheart went on the Third Crusade to the Holy Land, William Briwere was associated with the Bishops of Durham and Ely in the administration of the Kingdom and when on his return to England the King was made a prisoner in Germany de Briwere helped to negotiate the ransom that was required to free him.
Sir William was given the Manor of Stoke at the beginning of the 13th century and in 1217 he appointed the first Rector of Stoke Bruerne whose name was Richard de Rolf. The church - the Church of St Mary the Virgin - grew and changed as architecture evolved and as each succeeding generation tried to make it the best looking in the district. Built and maintained by the contributions of all the community it was for them a place of worship, a place to meet and a place to transact important business. The south porch was used for the first part of the marriage service and for business agreements which, like marriages, were not to lightly broken. Inside the church there were altars with wooden or carved stone images not only to the Virgin, but also to many saints. These altars were swept away during the Reformation in the reigns of Henry VII and his son Edward VI.