England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Simpson St Thomas

The Parish

The parish of Simpson lies in northeastern Buckinghamshire not too far from its border with neighbouring Bedfordshire. Simpson is located roughly 6 miles south of the market town of Newport Pagnell and sits immediately north of the A5 (London to Holyhead) road. At the time of this transcript Simpson would have been a small riverside, it sits on the banks of the Great Ouse, village but today it is an integral part of one of Britain's largest "New Towns", Milton Keynes, indeed the first houses built as part of that development are sited within the former village of Simpson in Warren Bank. Simpson's economy, for these marriage participants, would have been devoted to farming, the site on the edge of the Great Ouse's flood-plain giving it excellent grazing to supplement the typical arable farming of the area. Today Simpson is merely a district of Milton Keynes, albeit some of the original village homes still lie along Simpson Road as memorial of the village that once was. The Great Ouse drains the parish northwards on a long journey that eventually reaches the sea through the port of King's Lynn and The Wash. Simpson is sited at around 70 metres above the sea in fairly level terrain where land gradually rises westwards a further 20 metres or so away from the Great Ouse. Simpson parish was fairly typically sized for its area, covering just over 1,300 acres it would have supported a population of around 600 parishioners. In Domesday times Simpson was an equally rural settlement, a rare Saxon survivor, Leofwin Cave, held a small share whilst the Norman Bishop Geoffrey de Coutances held the main, their collective assets being 9 ploughs, some meadow and there was a mill.

The Church

St Thomas' church (Pevsner gives the dedication as being to St Thomas & St Nicholas) sits towards the northern part of the old village, almost on the banks of the Great Ouse and at the junction of Simpson Road with Hanmer Road. Despite its cruciform layout, a traditional sign of an early church, there is little of the early medieval within its fabric. The late 13th century, by which time Early English Gothic was in Transition to Decorated, is represented only by the tower arches, supporting the crossing tower, they show semicircular responds and double-chamfered arches. Most of the church shows this later style of the Decorated period which flourished in the early 14th century and Pevsner speculates that the church was expanded at that time around a pre-existing tower. Like most churches there was an extensive Victorian restoration, here there were 3 separate phases in 1873, necessitated by the need to underpin the tower, in 1892 and finally in 1904 to complete today's church. The main entrance lies off Hanmer Road where street parking is perfectly adequate. Metal gates grant entry to a church which sits within a small area within a veritable forest of trees, there is nowhere allowing extended vistas but the ingenuity of the photographer may suffice in finding adequate images.