England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Little Shelford All Saints

The Parish

The parish of Little Shelford lies in southern Cambridgeshire roughly 5 miles south of the university town of Cambridge. Little Shelford sits about a mile west of the A1301 road which connects Cambridge with the A11, Norwich to London road. Little Shelford is a mid-sized village built around a triangle of lanes on the western banks of the River Granta with most properties along Church Street which connects it to Great Shelford its mirror image across the river, further properties line the lane leading south from that street. Little Shelford has expanded in modern times with its proximity to Cambridge and excellent communications leading to demand for commuter properties. At the time of this transcript it was a typical Cambridgeshire farming village with arable in dominance but with the water-meadows of the Granta providing diversity in the form of lush pastures. Modern developments have come aplenty to the parish, the railway line between Cambridge and Royston passing to its north whilst the modern M11 motorway passes to the west all adding to the village desirability. Little Shelford is drained northwards by the Granta which merges with the Rhee becoming the Cam before passing through Cambridge, deep within the Fens it meets the Great Ouse before passing through the Norfolk port of King's Lynn and The Wash to the North Sea. Little Shelford is sited at around 15 metres above the sea in very gentle terrain where the low rises of Cockle Hill and Clunch Pit Hill fail to make 25 metres in largely flat landscape. Covering just under 1,200 acres Little Shelford was a relatively small parish yet supported a population of around 550 parishioners. Little Shelford is not specifically mentioned in Domesday Book, it is suspected it was included in the entry for its neighbour, Great Shelford.

The Church

All Saints' church sits on the northern side of Church Street towards the eastern end of the village and not too far from the Granta. As Pevsner states in his opening this is a church with a complicated building history with several eras of the medieval intermixed with much work resulting from the two Victorian restorations. The apparently earliest feature is a window set into the chancel's southern wall which some believe to be Saxo-Norman, Pevsner, however, dismisses these claims declaring it an "assemblage of gravestone fragments" from one of those restorations. The northern wall, however, does have one genuine 12th century Norman window. Both chancel and western tower, complete with embattlements and topped by a spike of a steeple, are basically early 14th century and in the Decorated style whilst between lies a nave which is essentially late 14th or early 15th and in the later Perpendicular style. Overlain across the medieval are two extensive restorations from the 19th century and one from the early 18th century. The earlier restoration rebuilt the western wall of the nave in a red brick, that of 1854 replaced the chancel arch whilst the third of 1879 not only restored the remainder of the chancel, including the controversial window, as well as adding the southern porch. Church Street is of sufficient width to allow on-street parking, there are entrances at both eastern and western ends of the site which is screened from the road by a thick row of birches. Sadly for the photographer trees are a distinct impediment to obtaining adequate imagery of this church with most aspects lost in foliage.