England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Leckwith St James

The Parish

The parish of Leckwith lies in southeastern Glamorgan not too far from its coastline with the Bristol Channel. Leckwith is located about 2 miles west of the city of Cardiff and is a small village sitting on a bluff overlooking the redeveloped Cardiff Bay. Leckwith sits a half mile west of the fast dual-carriageway of the A4232 which connects western Cardiff with the M4 motorway, the B4267 runs through the village en route to Penarth. At the time of this transcript Leckwith would have been a small village engaged in farming, pastoral in the main, along with quarrying of the limestone on which its stands mainly for local building stone and for applying to the land. Today the area has been transformed with extensive retail and business parks below the bluff which include the new Cardiff City football ground as well as Glamorgan Archives smart new location. A series of small streams run down from the bluff through wooded dells to joins the Afon Elai which flows out through the Cardiff bay complex to the Bristol Channel. Leckwith is sited at around 70 metres above the sea but the bluff rises to top out at 115 metres. Parishes in this area are fairly small and Leckwith was no exception, covering just over 1,300 acres it would have supported only a few more than 100 parishioners. Like most of Wales leckwith is not mentioned in Domesday Book which did not cover this area.

The Church

The former church of St James sits alongside the B4267 (Leckwith Road), in Pevsner account it was "standing in forlorn disuse" and today has been re-purposed as a private dwelling. The church was a Victorian replacement for the venue of these marriages having been rebuilt in 1866. A plain and simple design of nave and slightly lower chancel, the church was clearly of little architectural interest as Pevsner's account is brief in the extreme. Whilst a small sign on the northern gates states visitors are permitted to the old churchyard clearly one must respect the privacy of the residents, the Leckwith Road is also busy and has no suitable parking close by.