New Hope Church - Thorney 

The first recorded history of the village refers to Ancarig – the place where anchorites lived as religious hermits – in the sixth century.  It became known as Thorney – the Isle of Thorns – reflecting the position of the island in the middle of the fens, or marshes.
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Archaeological investigations indicate that there has been settlement around Thorney from the Iron Age, Bronze Age and Roman times, before the first Christian settlers. However, the Danish invaders destroyed the religious settlement in 870, though it is said that the monks of Thorney escaped the attack.
 
Thorney was a monastic establishment until 1539. From 1551, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the estate passed to the Russell family. They were Earls and later Dukes of Bedford. 
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A community of Walloon Protestant refugees, originally from areas of Flanders that are now northern France, was settled here in the 17th century with their own church and minister, employing the ruins of the abbey for services in their own language. The Walloons had expertise in fenland drainage and assisted in the work of draining in the area. Much of the village was built at the command of the Dukes of Bedford, who wished to have a healthy place in which their estate workers could live. In the mid-19th century many buildings were added to the designs of the architect S.S. Teuton, himself a descendant of Huguenots.