England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Thriplow St George

The Parish

The parish of Thriplow lies in the extreme south of Cambridgeshire separated from Hertfordshire by mere yards of the joint parishes of Fowlmere and the Duxfords. Thriplow is located roughly 5 miles northeast of the town of Royston which, itself, has oscillated between the two counties. Thriplow sits a mile north of the A505 road which links the A11 (Norwich to London) road through to the Bedfordshire town of Luton. Thriplow has an unusual configuration, Pevsner describes it as "dispersed around a big square composed of mile long streets with a further street up the middle". Thriplow is one of a series of villages that sit upon ground rising from the Fenland onto chalk-land, here the chalk beds are horizontal or nearly so and lack the escarpments of further south. The thin soils of little agricultural use in early times, indeed early gazetteers describe as much as 70% of the parish acreage as in common or as waste. Today the area has been turned into a bread basket by the use of modern machinery & fertilisers, a landscape of vast fields of, largely, cereals. Modern developments have skirted the edges of Thriplow parish, the modern M11 motorway bisecting the landscape between Thriplow and Whittlesford. A thin brook drains the parish northwards merging with others before joining the River Cam, the latter passes through Cambridge and meets the Great Ouse to the south of Ely before reaching the North Sea through the Norfolk port of King's Lynn and The Wash. Thriplow is sited at between 20 & 30 metres above the sea in gentle terrain, to the south the chalk, also gently, rises steadily to 100 metres close to the ancient trackway of Icknield Way. At just short of 2,300 acres Thriplow parish was larger than many of its ilk and would have supported a population of around 450 parishioners. Most of Thriplow was in the control of Ely Abbey at Domesday, a small share with Geoffrey de Mandeville varied the control, a healthy 11 ploughs backed by some meadows made for a fairly typical rural manor.

The Church

St George's church sits just to the northeast of the northeastern corner of the square that forms the village, accessed by a track from Brook Road and sitting on  a small knoll. The cruciform layout is one common to early churches, especially those of 12th century origins, here that 12th century church was substantially altered a century or so later removing most traces of the Norman Romanesque, a few traces such as the shafted angles of the diagonal buttresses in the northern transept remain if reset. Lancet styled windows through the transepts and into the chancel indicate these are the earliest major pieces of fabric remaining, Early English Gothic in style and mostly of the 13th century. The upper stages of the central crossing tower are, however, from the 14th century, the first half in particular and Decorated in style. Later from the 14th and into the 15th century and Perpendicular in style is the nave, the final major piece of fabric. A typical Victorian restoration, here of two campaigns, 1865 - 1870 & 1875 - 1877, added the southern porch and the east window as well as tidying up in general. For those who cannot manage the short track a small parking area does exist but it is only a matter of a hundred yards or so from Brook Road where the village notice board and a small sign point the way. Once within  the churchyard there are no significant obstacles for the photographer.