England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Kniveton St Michael

The Parish

The parish of Kniveton lies in western Derbyshire, within the portion covered by the Peak District National Park, roughly 3 miles northeast of the market town of Ashbourne. Kniveton is a small and rather linear village built along the B5035 road which connects Ashbourne through to Wirksworth & Matlock. This area of the park is built upon a base of Carboniferous limestone giving the area the name "White Peak". The thin soils that formed are unsuitable for arable agriculture and dairy farming together with sheep rearing form the backbone of the economy. Some quarrying of the limestone for building stone varies the incomes. Despite the porous limestone Kniveton Brook and Henmore Brook drain the parish south and then southwestwards to join the famous River Dove, the latter leaves the hills to join the Trent east of Burton Upon Trent and continue a long journey to the North Sea arriving through the Humber Estuary. An upland parish, Kniveton is sited at around 210 metres above the sea albeit land rises still further reaching almost 300 metres on nearby Madge Hill. For an upland Derbyshire parish Kniveton parish covered a relatively small area, just over 1,900 acres would have supported a population of close to 300 parishioners. In Domesday times Kniveton was a holding of Earl Hugh of Chester and a relatively underdeveloped place offering some meadows & woodland with potential for 4 ploughs.

The Church

St Michael's church sits towards the eastern end of the village on the southern side of the B5035 and opposite the easternmost side lane leading north. Whilst there has been a church here since the 12th century little remains of that Norman Romanesque building that would have been the first incarnation. The southern doorway shows that 12th century style built has been redeployed during later restoration and rebuild. The earliest intact portion is the rather rough-hewn western tower which shows the lancet windows characteristic of the Early English Gothic style of the late 13th century. It is to restoration & rebuild that much else originates, major work in the 1660s saw the nave & chancel substantially rebuilt whilst the gallery windows date from 18th century work. Strangely there is no Victorian restoration mentioned by Pevsner so if one occurred it was light & sensitive. A small triangular area outside the gates permits a single car to get off-road where wooden gates pierce the local stone wall of the churchyard. A single substantial evergreen southwest of the nave causes a few issues for the photographer but otherwise all is open and uncluttered.