England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Swarraton St Andrew

The Parish

The parish of Swarraton lies almost centrally in Hampshire roughly 9 miles northeast of the city of Winchester. Swarraton sits on the B3046 road which links Old Alresford with Basingstoke. There is very little to Swarraton, a blink-and-miss-it settlement of just a few houses and farms that is a mere adjunct to Northington to its north. Indeed such is the proximity of the two that the parishes have over time merged with the former chapel of ease at Northington becoming the parish church for the two. Like most parishes in this area Swarraton was a farming parish with early gazetteers placing as much as 80% of the parish acreage as set to arable, a situation which is still rather similar. Swarraton is drained southwards by the intermittent stream of the Candover, the River Itchen is met and passes through Winchester and Southampton to the English Channel through Southampton Water. Swarraton is sited at around 90 metres above the sea in its valley setting, ouside the valley land rises to both sides in rolling downland to reach 160 metres on nearby Bugmore Hill. Swarraton parish was a rather small parish of just under 750 acres which supported a tiny congregation of just over 100 parishioners. Swarraton is not mentioned in Domesday Book.

The Church

St Andrew's church became redundant when the parish merged with Northington and was demolished in 1849. The church sat to the west of the Candover and west of the B3046 amongst meadows, a roughly surfaced farm track leads westwards from the B3046 passing the former site. Sadly there do not appear to be historic images of what early gazetteers describe as "a neat edifice with a spire".