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

The Parish

The parish of Dursley lies in the southern portion of central Gloucestershire roughly 15 miles southwest of the county town of Gloucester. Dursley is a market town which sits, tucked away in a tightly incised valley in the escarpment of the Cotswold range, on the A4135 road, this road rises up from the busy A38 passes through Dursley and heads to Tetbury. Given its location in a valley with steep sides most of the properties are strung out along the valley bottom, more modern developments rise up these slopes both to north and south. Earliest references to Dursley place its origins in the Saxon period but it was not until Roger de Berkeley founded a castle here in the mid-12th century that a town was formed. Granted its market around in 1471 by King Edward IV it became a trading point for the regions produce as well as the location for specialist services. The small area of the parish had some farming, mostly pastoral. For many years the fast-flowing River Ewelme powered mills such that by the early 16th century Dursley was one of the principal cloth producing centres of the Cotswolds, the fulling mills have all gone nowadays to be replaced by an engineering works and general light industry & services. The distinctive local stone, a tufa, used in the castle, which was demolished in Tudor times, was also extensively quarried and used for local building stone. Modern developments have largely been and gone, a branch railway line from Coaley junction on the main Bristol to Gloucester line has since closed and been largely removed, the modern M5 motorway keeps away from the slopes of the Cotswolds and runs some 3 miles to Dursley's west. The Ewelme drains the parish westwards and then northwest across the Severn plains to join that river, but much man-altered in its course, through the grazing marshes of The Warth. Dursley is sited at around 70 metres above the sea with some of its modern suburbs at close to 120 metres up the valley  sides, the town is overlooked by the isolated local peak of Downham Hill which rises to a metres short of 200 metres and by Cam Long Down which overtops by a further 10 metres. Dursley parish was largely confined to the town and an immediate hinterland, covering just over 900 acres it still supported a population of close to 2,900 parishioners. Dursley's entry in Domesday Book is perhaps difficult to believe, held directly by King William, himself, it claims to hold an incredible 197 ploughs, surely this is a regional figure rather than the actual count of the town, that it also held an impressive 10 mills alludes to the source of its future wealth and is much more credible and indicative of its asset value to the king,

The Church

St James' church sits at the heart of the town on the northern side of the A4135 as it passes through, here it bears the name Silver Street. Pevsner speculates that it was founded in the 12th century, it common with the former castle and using the local tufa as its main building stone. There is no physical remains of that period but it remains likely, it is certainly mentioned in documents of the 13th century but, again, nothing of that period has survived the aspirations of the wealthy cloth-men of the late medieval period who financed the existing fabric to preserve their souls. The 14th century, Decorated in style, can be seen in the canopied triple sedilia but it is to the 15th century that most of the church is found and in the Perpendicular style of that century. The Tanner Chapel was financed by one of those said merchants and is a good example of the style. Also of the period and showing the style well are the 2-bay arcade and the two storied southern porch. On 7th January 1698 (old style date) the church received a major set-back as the spire and much of the western tower fell. Between 1707 & 1709 its replacement, based supposedly upon the style of the tower at Colerne in Wiltshire, was built to replace the cleared rubble. LIke most churches the Victorians went to work, and in this case it was extensive. The main work of the late 1860s saw the chancel rebuilt and extended, it also acquired a vestry and organ chamber; in addition the nave roof was raised and the increased height used to insert clerestory windows. A further restoration of 1889 saw the porch and southern aisle restored whilst in 1920 a baptistry was devised from the confines of the western end of the aisle. Like most town churches this is one to approach on foot once parking has been found within the town's car parks. Sadly the site is rather too small for the large size of this town church and it is a real challenge to get an angle incorporating its whole, from a landscape perspective, given the little space within the churchyard, the busy streets with adjacent commercial properties and volumes of traffic which would sit between the best viewpoints, across the street, and the church.