England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Coddington St Mary

The Parish

The parish of Coddington is located in southwestern Cheshire, quite close to the border with neighbouring Denbighshire. Coddington sits, in lanes, about a mile north of the A534 road which links the Denbighshire industrial town of Wrexham with Nantwich. Coddington village is a relatively small collection of farms & cottages grouped around a junction of lanes but the parish would also have included the other hamlets of Barton & Clutton along the A road. The main employer in the parish would have been agriculture and the parish was a mixture of pastoral, in the main, but with a good proportion of arable too. Coddington sits within the broad lower valley of the River Dee, a small tributary (Coddington Brook) drains the parish northwards to join that river on its journey to the Irish Sea though Chester. This is low-lying countryside, Coddington is sited at just 15 metres above the sea, the nearest high ground being several miles to the southeast. Cheshire parishes are usually quite large and Coddington, covering almost 3,000 acres, is no exception; with the other settlements the parish would have supported just over 300 parishioners. In Domesday times Coddington was quite a small settlement, it was held by one Earl Hugh of Chester together with his son Robert, it boasted just 3 ploughs but did have a meadow and a mill.

The Church

St Mary's church sits on the northern side of Aldersey Lane where it crosses the Coddington Brook. The church is a 19th century replacement for the mediaeval building which was demolished in the 1830s. The building is of the type funded by the Church Commissioners and is clearly of little architectural interest, Pevsner merely devotes a handful of lines to its description. The previous church was supposed to have been 11th century and sported a wooden belfry, it clearly would have interested the great man more. St Mary's church sits in a rather elevated position, the banks retained by a substantial block wall and a series of steps granting entry. The church is heavily screened from the south by mature trees which limit photography from that direction.