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

The Parish

The parish of Little Easton lies in western Essex not too far from its border with neighbouring Hertfordshire. Little Easton is a small and compact village lying about 2 1/2 miles northwest of the market town of Great Dunmow. Little Easton sits about 1 mile west of the B184 road which connects Great Dunmow with Thaxted. Like most Essex communities Little easton would have been a farming community at the time of this transcript, arable would have dominated then and it is almost exclusively that form in situ today. Little Easton sits on the western banks of the headwaters of the River Chelmer which drains the parish southeastwards passing through Great Dunmow & Chlemsford before reaching the North Sea through Maldon & the Blackwater Estuary. Little Easton is sited at around 70 metres above the sea in gentle countryside, local heights rise to around 100 metres within a mile or so. Little Easton parish was fairly typically sized for a village in this area, covering around 1,600 acres it would have supported a population of around 350 parishioners. In Domesday time Little Easton was recorded together with its larger neighbour, Great Easton. Shared by 4 landholders the collective could offer 19 ploughs, meadows & woodlands and 2 mills albeit the larger holding would probably have been at Great Easton.

The Church

St Mary's church sits almost a half mile away from the centre of Little Easton, close to the site of the hall. Whilst the church has Norman Romanesque features retained they are scanty and limited to a pair of windows on the northern side of the nave. Much else is Perpendicular and 15th century in origin or later still. The church is dominated by the southern Bourchier Chapel which was added as part of this 15th century rebuild, this chapel is as wide as the nave and takes the southern limit of the church close to the surrounding churchyard wall. Further work happened in the 19th century, the Bourchier chapel windows were altered to a faux Neo-Norman style in 1857 whilst the northern chancel aisle was added as part of a general restoration in the late 1870s. The church sits on the northern side of Park Road where a small triangular green allows parking outside the wooden gates. Because of the proximity of the southern chapel to the flint & brick walls of the churchyard the best angles are probably from outside the churchyard which has few obstructions to photography.