England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Little Eversden St Helen

The Parish

The parish of Little Eversden lies in southwestern Cambridgeshire about 6 miles southwest of the city of Cambridge. Little Eversden sits just west of the A603 road which connects Cambridge with the former route of Roman Ermine Street, now the A1198. Little Eversden is a small and rather linear village with most properties built along a dead-end lane which leads to the church. This area is intensely arable with broad fields of cereal, oil seed and beet dominating the rather flat landscape. Perhaps a more mixed economy at the time of this transcript but still dominated by arable farming. Little Eversden is sufficiently close to the sit of Cambridge to have an impact, the Radio Astronomy Observatory being close by together with its traveling telescope. A small tributary of the Cam drains the parish eastwards, joining the latter at Grantchester, the Cam joins the Great Ouse and thence to the North Sea through the Wash. Little Eversden is sited at around 30 metres above the sea and sits on the plain at the foot of Cambridgeshire's low chalk hill, land rises to the south to around 70 metres within a mile or so. Southern Cambridgeshire parishes are rather small and Little Eversden was one of these, it covered under 700 acres and would have supported a population of around 200 parishioners. In Domesday times Little Eversden was not separately enumerated being combined with Great Eversden, the pair being shared between more than four landowners, the combined assets being 11 ploughs, meadows & woodland with a wealth of detailed livestock.

The Church

St Helen's church sits at the eastern end of a small side-cutting lane (Church Lane). The main body of the church is almost entirely in the Decorated style of architecture which flourished through the first half of the 14th century. Pevsner dates only the porch to the beginning of that century. The western tower is later and of the Perpendicular style so the whole probably represents a single building campaign running through the majority of the 14th century. Church Lane is something of a curiosity in that it describes a full loop around the churchyard which is oval in shape. A low stone wall encircles what is a very crowded churchyard making for a very difficult subject to adequately capture.