England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Wicken Bonhunt St Margaret

The Parish

The parish of Wicken Bonhunt lies in northwestern Essex about 4 miles southwest of the market town of Saffron Walden. Wicken Bonhunt is a small village, little more than a hamlet, which sits on the B1038 midway between Newport and Clavering. Wicken Bonhunt is grouped around its eponymous Hall and was most likely a "closed " parish where most land was held by a single landholder and inbound migration was discouraged thus preventing a nuclear village being created. Today's village stretches along the B1038 which two small groups, that close to the Hall and the second westward around the crossroads. Like most Essex parishes Wicken Bonhunt would have been a farming community, at the time of this transcript it was estimated at 75% arable and little has changed. Wicken Bonhunt is drained eastwards by the Wicken Water which soon joins the infant Cam, passing through Cambridge it joins the Great Ouse to reach the North Sea through The Wash. Wicken Bonhunt is sited at around 80 metres above the sea in gently rolling countryside with local heights rising to just under 120 metres within a mile or so. Essex parishes are fairly small but Wicken Bonhunt was one of the smaller, covering barely 800 acres it would have supported a population of close to 150 parishioners. In Domesday times Wicken Bonhunt was held by one Gilbert son of Thurold and was an equally small place offering just 5 ploughs as well as small meadows & woodland.

The Church

St Margaret's church is set back from the B1038 around 100 yards behind the village inn and next to the Hall. The church has its origins in the 12th century but the principal feature which gives that date was the round tower which formerly graced the building. Removed in the 1850s restoration the earliest portion remaining is now of the 13th century. The chancel is, however, all that remains of the mediaeval. The restoration of the 1850s was so substantial as to constitute almost a complete rebuilding of the remainder and Pevsner seems scandalised that this should have been perpetrated by a prominent Ecclesiologist, John Hanson Sperling. A small patch outside the gates allows parking and the churchyard is fairly open, a group of trees does, however, impede the aspect of that controversial western tower.