England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Offley St Mary Magdalene

The Parish

The parish of Offley lies in the extreme north of Hertfordshire with its peculiar shape granting two stretches of the county's border with neighbouring Bedfordshire. Offley is located roughly 3 miles southwest of the market town of Hitchin and sits immediately south of the A505 road which links Hitchin with the Bedfordshire industrial town of Luton. Whilst the parish is named simply Offley there are twin settlements, Great & Little Offley within it. Great Offley, the larger as its name suggests, sits on the former route of the A505, nowadays thankfully passing to the north on a dual-carriageway, whilst Little Offley is a small hamlet a half mile or so further south. Most of the properties in Great Offley sits around a former major crossroads for the old A505 whilst a further extension stretches towards Little Offley along King's Walden Road. Offley sits on chalk which gave early man easy working of the land, the ancient Icknield Way passes through the northern edges of the parish. Those early neolithic farmlands were replaced in medieval times by extensive sheep-walks, wool being in high demand for the cloth industry. Today large arable fields dominate the landscape with cereals, beet & oil-seed the main crops. With most of the parish sitting on porous chalk there is little surface drainage until the River Oughton is reached to the northeast, the Oughton heads north, joins the Ivel and then the Great Ouse en route to the North Sea arriving through the port of King's Lynn. Offley is sited on relatively high ground for its county at around 160 metres above the sea, the chalk tops out at 187 metres on nearby Galley Hill before plunging off its escarpment into Bedfordshire. Offley was one of the most extensive parishes in its county, covering almost 5,600 it is more reminiscent of a northern upland parish in extent than a typical southern arable parish, within that acreage it would have supported a population of just over 1,100 parishioners. Even in Domesday times Offley was an important place with a population of sufficient size to place it amongst the largest 20% of settlements recorded in the book, shared between King William and William d'Eu it assets of 14 ploughs and extensive woodland were less impressive reflecting the poor soils of the chalk.

The Church

St Mary's church sits between Great & Little Offley on the eastern side of King's Walden Road just before Great Offley terminates. As can be seen from the images the church is a hotch-potch of styles, materials and ages. Strangely it is the middle section of nave and aisles which is the oldest portion, here the medieval holds sway with Pevsner dating the nave and its 4-bay arcades to the 1st half of the 13th century. A date of c1230 is offered which ties in well with the Early English Gothic style prevalent at that era. They are built in typical materials of the medieval with both flint & stone. Moving east one finds a complete contrast in the chancel which is dated to 1777, a most unusual date for major church-building. Here there is Portland limestone on the external facings, rather blank faces and just a single lancet on the eastern face, the only decorations being the battements and corner pinnacles. The tower is the latest major portion and it too was built in a period when little church-building took place namely a completion of 1800. Here the material changes once again now to brick but the battlements reappear and there is a short spire set within them. For once Pevsner fails to mention a typical Victorian restoration so if one occurred it was light and sensitive. King's Walden Road is of sufficient width to allow street parking outside the churchyard which is entered through wrought-iron gates, the space within being only marred by a single tree to the southwest of the church which is easily avoided by the photographer.