England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Caxton St Andrew

The Parish

The parish of Caxton lies in the extreme west of Cambridgeshire forming a short part of the border with neighbouring Huntingdonshire. Caxton sits roughly midway between the city of Cambridge and the Huntingdonshire town of St Neots being roughly 10 miles west of Cambridge. Caxton sits on the former route of the A1198 road which sits astride the ancient Roman Road Ermine Street and which now bypasses Caxton to its east. Market town status was granted to Caxton in 1247 but that status has long since lapsed as it failed to grow into a significant town. It flourished as one of the principal stages along the stagecoach route between London & the North but today is merely a large village, increasingly developed as a suburb of the nearby city. The surrounding parish is extensively arable, a situation unchanged from the time of this transcript. Caxton is drained eastwards by a small headwater of the Bourn Brook which heads east to join the Cam at Grantchester, heads through Cambridge and across the Fens joining the Great Ouse and reaching the North Sea through The Wash. Caxton is sited at around 50 metres above the sea, land is unspectacularly but gently rolling hereabouts rising to local heights close to 80 metres to Caxton's south. Caxton parish was fairly typically sized for its area, covering 2,300 acres it would have supported a population of close to 550 parishioners. In Domesday times Caxton was a middling sort of place, held by one Hardwin de Scales it could offer 12 ploughs together with some meadows.

The Church

St Andrew's church sits at the southwestern-most corner of the village on the northern side of the lane heading towards Great Gransden. Whilst the church does have mediaeval origins it is largely a construct of a severe restoration in the 1860s. Pevsner struggles to locate dating detail of the original building but finds little other than the following. The earliest portion is clearly the chancel of the late 13th century showing the plate tracery of that date, the western tower is dateable to the 14th century and the Decorated period whilst traces of Perpendicular style and late 14th/early 15th periods are present still in the western doorway and the reworked bell-openings. Almost everything else dates from the Victorian restoration described by Pevsner as "heavy". The church is difficult of parking being accessed primarily by a small gate from the Gransden Road. A pathway leads through to the churchyard which is open and relatively free of photographic obstacles.