England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Wingrave St Peter & St Paul

The Parish

Despite being fairly central within the county of Buckinghamshire, Wingrave has a stretch of the border with a peninsula of Hertfordshire land that juts determinedly into the heart of Buckinghamshire. Wingrave is a large village lying just over 5 miles northeast of Aylesbury and which sits a mile to the south of the A418 road which connects Aylesbury with the Bedfordshire town of Leighton Buzzard. Wingrave is largely built around a three-way junction of lanes but has also expanded in more recent times towards the A418. Like most villages in this area the farming would have been a mixed regime, the heavy clay soils being difficult to work for crops until the more recent development of machinery to work them. Whilst Wingrave is not especially high it does sit upon a watershed, streams draining westwards head for the Thame and the Thames whilst those heading east make for the Ouzel and the Great Ouse, the former reaching the North Sea through the capital whilst the latter reach it through The Wash. As a consequence Wingrave's height above the sea of 130 metres is something of a local high point. Wingrave parish was fairly tyically sized for this area, covering almost 2,900 acres it would have supported a population of close to 800 parishioners. In Domesday times Wingrave was shared between 3 landholders, Miles Crispin and Gunfrid de Chocques having larger shares with Count Robert of Mortain a much smaller holding. Collectively the assets amounted to an impressive 25 ploughs together with substantial meadows.

The Church

St Peter & St Paul's church dominates the centre of Wingrave so much so that the road layout performs three sides of an oblong to circumvent the churchyard which was clearly here long before the roads were established. Whilst the church does have early origins it was much altered by the Victorians so tracing its history is through remaining fragmentary evidence. The earliest date mentioned by Pevsner is given to the chancel which is dated to the last decade of the 12th century, a period when Romanesque was transitioning into Early English Gothic. From the 13th century comes the western tower whilst arcades were added to the basic structure in the 14th century. In the Perpendicular era most of the windows were replaced but it was in the late 1880s that most restoration and change took place. The churchyard sits between Winslow Road and Church Street with entrances from both. Parking in Church Street is possible with care. The churchyard is open, uncluttered and with only modest obstructions to photography.