Not many English villages can boast association with a world-renowned artist; Little Thurlow can, in Dame Elisabeth Frink.

The Frinks, of Dutch extraction with American and Canadian associations, were long-established and well-respected in the village, with army officers and artistic talent on both sides of the family. Captain Frederick Frink, a former Cambridge rugby blue who served at Gallipoli, and his wife, Mabel, lived first at 115a/115/116 The Street, when it was one house, The Limes, and later moved next door to The Grange, where Captain Frink ran a private school. He was chairman of the parish council from 1895 to 1950. In Little Thurlow church, the stained-glass window, 'Feed my Lambs', over the altar in the right aisle, bears an inscription to Elisabeth Frink's grandparents: 'In memory of Mabel Elenor Frink, Sept. 8 1931, and of Frederick Cuyler Frink, March 31 1956'. Elisabeth's parents, Ralph and Jean Frink, who met and married in India, were also active in village life. Ralph was educated at Sherborne and Sandhurst and served in the Yorkshire Dragoons, the Skinner's Horse and the Dragoon Guards. There is, again in Little Thurlow church, a small model inscribed 'St Edmund by Dame Elisabeth Frink RA, in memory of her Father, Brigadier Herbert Ralph Cuyler Frink DSO, 26 Aug. 1899­2 March 1974'. This was the maquette for the larger crusading figure of St Edmund by Frink, outside Bury St Edmunds Cathedral, commissioned by West Suffolk County Council and unveiled in 1976.