England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Akeley St James

The Parish

The parish of Akeley lies in northwestern Buckinghamshire not too far from its border with neighbouring Northamptonshire. Akeley is located roughly 3 miles north of the county town of Buckingham and sits on the A413 road which links Buckingham with the Northamptonshire town of Towcester. Akeley sits both on the main road and also to its east where properties line the lane headed for Leckhampstead. Like most parishes in this area Akeley would have primarily earned its income from farming, the heavy soils here led, at the time of this transcript, to a mixed farming regime with almost equal parts arable and pastoral. Today with the advent of heavy machinery there is much more arable in the mix. Akeley is drained southeastwards by a pair of small tributaries of the nearby River Great Ouse which is met to the northeast of Buckingham, a long journey then follows to reach the North Sea arriving through the Norfolk port of King's Lynn & The Wash. Akeley is sited at around 110 metres above the sea in gently rolling countryside where land rises equally gently to a local high spot of 147 metres to the northeast of nearby Stowe school. Akeley parish was towards the smaller end of Buckinghamshire parish sizes, covering just over 1,200 acres it would have supported a population of around 350 parishioners. In Domesday times Akeley was equally rural and equally small, held by one Walter Giffard it could muster merely 5 ploughs, a small meadow and some pig-infested woodland.

The Church

St James' church was demolished in the early 1980s having been deemed unsafe and surplus to local worship requirements. Only a handful of archival images exists to record the church's makeup. It must be stated that the church depicted was also not the venue for these marriages as it was first built to replace a medieval predecessor in 1854. Earliest records show a church in the village since the 12th century but the architecture and even the layout of that building is lost. The church sat on the beside the A413 where its former churchyard is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. On detailed 1:25,000 maps the presence of Church Farm is indicative of its location.