England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Hertford All Saints

The Parish

Hertford, the county town of its county of Hertfordshire, lies in the south of the county not too far from its border with neighbouring Essex, it sits roughly 21 miles north of the city of London and stands a mile west of the A10 road which links London with Cambridge. At one time the town consisted of 5 parishes but all are united nowadays into just 2 (All Saints and St Andrew). Hertford is a market town of some considerable age, its early foundation, like so many places, is lost in historical obscurity but clearly existed in Saxon times where twin forts, either side of the River Lea, were constructed to protect the infant town from Danish incursions. The arrival of the Normans saw a castle emerge on the site of the southern of these two forts and Hertford began to grow into a regional market. A charter for a market was granted by Charles II to consolidate the town's position as the market for trade and the home of specialist skills requiring a substantial population. Industry developed only scarcely and most were in trades linked to agriculture such as malting and milling. Modern developments have arrived in abundance, the Lee Navigation, Hertford being its terminus, arrived in 1767 and railways from the capital in 1843 again promoting growth but now of a more suburban nature, today both the A10 to Hertford's east and the A414 to its south have both been upgraded to highway standards to ease the once dreadful traffic issues. Hertford is drained eastwards and then south by the Lea which eventually makes its way through eastern London to meet the Thames at Blackwall, the latter as an estuary flows to the North Sea. Hertford is sited at between 40 metres at the Lea's bridges to 70 metres in its outer suburbs, to its south a few spots come close to 100 metres in relatively gentle terrain. Of the two remaining parishes All Saints, which had subsumed that of St John, largely covers the south and east of the town, it also included a stretch of rural countryside south of the town, and covered some 5,500 acres at its greatest extent, that area supporting a population of around 3,700 parishioners. Domesday Hertford was a holding of King William and recorded as a single entity, its population was, as a Saxon foundation, already large enough to place it amongst the largest 20% of settlements by population; its assets of an impressive 39 ploughs were supported by the usual meadows, pastures and woodland making for a wealthy holding for the King.

The Church

All Saints' church has unfortunately been largely cut off from the town centre by the construction of Gascoyne Way a dual-carriageway cut through the old town to relieve traffic, it is best accessed from Churchfields to its east. Sadly the church that now stands here is not the medieval church rather that was destroyed by fire in 1891 and the revived church rose phoenix-like with the final completion, of its tower, in 1905. Pevsner is disappointed in that the new church was built in stone imported from the Runcorn area of Cheshire, a red sandstone, and consequently stands out as "alien" to Hertfordshire. Nevertheless he is impressed by the hexagonal northwestern porch and the lofty interior, the whole church is built in a throwback style to the Perpendicular. Churchfields has some on-street parking slightly away from the site with the main churchyard protected merely by a row of bollards, the church stands within an impressively broad churchyard which is largely devoid of obstacles for the photographer.