England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Southill All Saints

The Parish

The parish of Southill lies in eastern Bedfordshire roughly 4 miles southwest of the market town of Biggleswade. Southill sits about 1 mile west of the B658 road which joins Biggleswade with Shefford. Southill parish was extensive and included not only the village of Southill, a linear village stretching eastwards for a half mile from Southill Park, as well as Broom to the east, close to the course of the River Ivel, and Stanford to the southeast, a small crossroads settlement. Dominating the parish was the large estate of Southill Park, the home of the brewing dynasty of the Whitbread family, still a private house but with some of the gardens and associated parkland available to the public. Southill is a farming parish, its heavy clay soils were suitable for the extensive growing of barley mainly for brewing whilst the floodplain of the Ivel gave rich pastures. In addition to farming the local trades included lace making and home-based textiles. Modern developments have come but not stayed for too long, the Ivel navigation attempted to canalise that river up to Shefford but is disused and a railway branch line from Shefford to Bedford passes through but has also closed leaving just bridges and cuttings. Southill is drained northeast and then north by the Ivel which joins the Great Ouse to the south of St Neots, the Great Ouse traverses Fenland to reach the North Sea arriving through the Norfolk port of King's Lynn and The Wash. Southill is sited at around 40 metres above the sea in gentle terrain which rises gradually westwards to just below the 90 metre contour at the A600 (Bedford to Shefford) road. As already mentioned Southill was an extensive parish of some 6,000 acres which would have supported a population of close to 1,400 parishioners. In Domesday time Southill was shared by no fewer than 6 landholders it offered 13 ploughs backed by meadows & woodland, also in multiple hands was Stanford which offered a further 10 ploughs, more meadows & woodland as well as 4 mills, Broom, too, had an entry but no assets.

The Church

All Saints' church stands to the northwest of the village of Southill on the edge of the parkland of Southill Park, it is accessed by track from School Lane. All Saints is almost entirely a church of the 15th century, Pevsner finds only a single window of the northern aisle as demonstrating an earlier origin, this window shows Geometrical tracery of a date of c1300 and is indicative that the church was likely to have been completely rebuilt in the 15th century. The church is largely built in a local courses ironstone with limestone dressings and follows the standard layout of nave, chancel and western tower, the nave being augmented with 5-bay arcades and the chancel with the 17th century burial vault of the local Byng family. Restoration of the church came early, in the Georgian period, as between 1811 & 1814 major structural overhaul was made, new parapets were added, the burial vault reworked as a vestry, the clerestory inserted, many windows replaced and the tower repaired. From the point where School Lane performs a left hand turn a track heads straight ahead to a car park shared by the church with a garden centre, from here a diagonal path leads to the church, the churchyard has clumps of trees which prevent a straightforward landscape view from the south but enough other angles remain to record both landscape and tower portraits for the photographer.