England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Grateley St Leonard

The Parish

The parish of Grateley lies in the extreme northwest of Hampshire forming a short stretch of the county's border with neighbouring Wiltshire.Grateley is located roughly 6 miles southwest of the town of Andover and sits just over 2 miles south of the A303 road, a busy thoroughfare linking London through to Exeter. Grateley is a small and compact village built around a crossroads of lane on chalk, here the chalk lies horizontally giving a less extreme nature to the landscape. The surrounding hills are poor for growing of crops and in the past were the runs of sheep, today with the advent of modern machinery & fertilisers it is typically arable with vast fields of cereals. Modern developments have come to the parish, the railway line from Andover to Salisbury passing close to the south granting Grateley a station it shares with the strangely named village of Palestine. Sitting on porous chalk there is little surface drainage in the immediate surroundings until the infant Wallop Brook emerges draining southwards to meet the Test and ultimately passing through Southampton to the English Channel. Grateley is sited at around 100 metres above the sea, all around is a plain at similar height broken only the by isolated hilltop of Quarley Hill complete with the obligatory Iron Age hill-fort which reaches 172 metres as an isolated hill. At just under 1m600 acres Grateley parish was typically sized for a southern and largely arable parish, within that acreage it would have supported a population of around 150 parishioners, Grateley is not mentioned in Domesday Book.

The Church

St Leonard's church sits at the northwestern corner of the village on the narrow lane which joins it to the busy A303. This is an early church which received an "over-restoration", as stated by Pevsner. Thankfully early portions remain with the eastern half of the nave dating from the 12th century, the Norman Romanesque style. This very early nave is joined to a 13th century chancel and also to a 13th century western tower both in the Early English Gothic style of that century, both tower & chancel show lancet style windows, the narrow slit-like characteristic of this period. By the end of the 13th century the core of the church was essentially complete, a minor change in the 15th century added angle-buttresses to the tower, perhaps to prevent weakness in that structure from causing a collapse. It was in 1851 that the Victorian restorers over-enthusiastically restored albeit leaving enough to document the history of this ancient church. A small roughly surfaced car-park sots opposite allowing an extended visit, the main entrance is screened behind some trees but lies to the south where a couple of shallow steps rises to a small gate. Whilst most aspects are clear of obstacles the western tower is rather hemmed in by trees removing any good views of that feature.