England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Wootton St Mary

The Parish

The parish of Wootton lies in western Bedfordshire some 4 miles southwest of the county town of Bedford and separated merely by a narrow strip of Kempston parish from the border with neighbouring Buckinghamshire. Wootton is a large village which sits just under a mile west of the busy A421 road which connects Bedford through to the M1 and the large village of Woburn. Wootton's proximity to its larger neighbour has become more pronoiunced in recent times as the latter has expanded to within a mile of the village, the proximity leading to expanding of Wootton itself as a commuter settlement. At the time of this transcript, Wootton, like so many rural parishes, was a farming settlement with arable farming the principal regime. Modern developments have come to the parish, the Bedford to Bletchley rail line passing through the eastern part of the parish and more recently the A421 has been upgraded to a fast dual-carriageway. A small tributary of the nearby Great Ouse drains the parish northwards into the main channel, the long journey to the sea being completed through The Wash. Wootton is sited at around 40 metres above the sea in fairly gentle terrain, land rises westwards topping out at 98 metres at nearby Bourne End. Parishes in the west of Bedfordshire are fairly extensive for lowland arable parishes, Wootton parish covered 3,400 acres and would have supported a population of close to 1,100 parishioners. In Domesday times Wootton was a fairly average sort of parish, held by one Albert of Lorraine its assets totalled 15 ploughs with the usual meadows & woodland.

The Church

St Mary's church sits on the southern edge of the village with view over the fields to the south. The church, like so many, was extensively modified in Victorian times but enough remains to identify the building as constructed c1300 and in a largely Decorated style. Good examples of this style remain in the unusually tall arcades and that period is also well shown on the chancel arch, often the earliest part of a church. The western tower, topped with its steeple, is probably slightly later and early 14th century. Work dome in the late 1850s was extensive, the aisles, which embrace the western too, were an addition of that restoration whilst much of the chancel was modified too as well as the addition of the northern vestry. Work in the late 20th century to extend that vestry is the most recent change made to the church. Church Road forms the southern edge of Wootton and the narrow Church Row forks away to the main entrance of the churchyard with a small, if somewhat muddy, parking area just outside the gates. The churchyard is quite well-wooded making for something of a challenge to the photographer to adequately capture the church.