England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Horsenden St Michael

The Parish

The parish of Horsenden lies in southern Buckinghamshire roughly 7 miles southeast of the Oxfordshire market town of Thame. Horsenden is located just under a mile south of the B4009 road which skirts the edges of the Chiltern Hills from Dunstable to Watlington. Horsenden is a tiny place consisting merely of a small group of farms & cottages surrounding the church, in reality today's Horsenden is a mere extension of neighbouring Princes Risborough. Horsenden is also peculiar in the size and shape of its parish which consists of a narrow strip of land barely metres wide but extending from the Vale of Oxford clays up onto the tops of the chalk hills of the Chilterns. The purpose of this strange shape was to grant an share of each of the land types to the parish so a varied mixture of arable and pastoral, both cattle & sheep, pertained. Horsenden is drained northwestwards by a small stream which merges with the Cuttle Brook and then the River Thame before curving back south to meet the Thames, from that point matters turn east passing through the capital to the North Sea. Horsenden is sited at around 100 metres above the sea but views to the southeast are dominated by the nearby Chiltern Hill which top out at 236 metres at Windnill Hill. Horsenden's thin strip of land occupied only just over 500 acres making it one of the smallest rural parishes in its county, within that acreage fewer than 50 parishioners could be supported. In Domesday times tiny Horsenden was surprisingly shared by 3 landholders with Count Robert of Mortain holding the lion's share of 5 ploughs, a meadow and a mill.

The Church

In this peculiar parish it is also appropriate that its church is also peculiar, here the church of St Michael is a remnant of a former and much grander one. The church stands at the northwestern end of Horsenden Lane together with a few cottages. What remains is the former chancel of a much larger church, the latter's nave having been demolished in 1765; where that nave once stood a short and stubby western tower was erected in a mock of the traditional church layout. The main block of the church, that former chancel, is, at least, medieval and dated by Pevsner to the late-Perpendicular period of the 15th century. As already mentioned the church acquired its tower in the 18th century and this work was followed in 1855 by a more thorough restoration and again in 1869 when a 2 metre extension eastwards was completed. Horsenden Lane ends in a turning circle with space for one or two cars to park, the entrance is through a shady tree-tunnel, a theme which is continued in the churchyard which requires considerable ingenuity by the photographer to find appropriate angles such are the constraints of the many trees.