England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Moccas St Michael

The Parish

The parish of Moccas lies in western Herefordshire in the valley of the River Wye. Moccas is located roughly midway (about 12 miles) between Hereford & Hay on Wye and west of Hereford. There is not much to Moccas other than the estate of Moccas Court within which sits St Michael's church, there is no village as such merely a loose grouping of farms and cottages. Moccas sits just north of the B4348 road which meanders along the southern side of the Wye valley between Hereford & Hay. Moccas would largely have earned its living from pastoral farming and little has changed today. The Wye drains the parish southeastwards to eventually reach the Severn Estuary through the port of Chepstow. Moccas is sited at around 80 metres above the sea but land rises notably to the southwest in the escarpment of Woodbury Hill to almost 300 metres whilst further west it rises still more towards the mid-Wales hills. Even by Herefordshire standards Moccas parish was small, it covered just over 1,100 acres and would have supported a population of just under 200 parishioners. In Domesday times the majority of Moccas was held by the Canons of Hereford with a small portion held by one Nigel the Doctor, just as small in those times it could offer just 5 ploughs.

The Church

St Michael's church sits as stated within the grounds of Moccas Court but is accessible by the driveway eventually curving around to the church site and a small car park. St Michael is an ancient structure, Pevsner dates its origins and much of its fabric to the Norman Romanesque period of the 12th century. Despite later changes he notes the nave windows and the red sandstone doorways as being Norman features. The chancel windows are a little later about 1300 whilst in later periods windows of the Decorated style were added to the nave to improve the lighting of the interior. The timber porch was added in Victorian times whilst Pevsner speculates the bellcote as being from the first decade of the 19th century. The church sits in a parkland setting within an open churchyard, there are few obstructions to photography.