England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Fletton St Margaret

The Parish

The parish of Fletton lies in the extreme north of Huntingdonshire forming stretches of both borders with neighbouring Northamptonshire and also with Cambridgeshire, the Cambridgeshire portion of Stanground parish which straddles both counties. Fletton is located 1 mile, and immediately across the River Nene, south of the city of Peterborough. Fletton sits just west of the A15 road, nowadays part of Peterborough's bypass, which links Peterborough southwards to the Great North Road (A1) at Norman Cross. Early maps show Fletton as a distinct small village made up of twin lanes heading westwards from the church,  today Fletton is an integral suburb of the broad urban area that Peterborough has become, part of an urban area covering a broadly triangular area the sides of which are roughly 5 miles in extent. Fletton is thus merely the southeastern suburb of this metropolis. At the time of this transcript Fletton would have been a farming village, early gazetteers place the acreage almost equally between arable & pastoral farmland. It was in 1877 that saw the development of the brick industry for which Fletton is known, so much so that a style of brick is known simply as a "Fletton". Modern developments sped this development, the London to Peterborough railway line passes through the western edges of the parish whilst the development of the A15 into a speedy dual-carriageway has turned Fletton into a desirable location for distributional warehouses. A by-product of the extraction of clay for bricks is the flooded pits, nowadays used by fishermen & boaters as well as wildlife enthusiasts. The nearby Nene drains the parish eastwards, heading across the neighbouring Fens to reach the North Sea through The Wash. Fletton is sited at just 10 metres above the sea in fairly flat countryside, one has to travel beyond the Great North Road to reach a 20 metre contour. Fletton parish was small even by southern standards, covering only a little above 900 acres it would have supported a population of around 250 parishioners, many thousands today. In Domesday times Fletton was a holding of Peterborough Abbey, a small and relatively insignificant settlement offering just 8 ploughs and a small meadow.

The Church

St Margaret's church sits as almost the oldest building in the much changed Fletton, it is usually approached from Fletton Avenue. Despite all of the modernity around the church has origins back to the 12th century and the Norman Romanesque period of architecture. Whilst modified later the 12th century chancel together with its arch, northern chapel and northern arcade is given a tentative origin of c1175. The church received its first major rebuild a century later, lancet style windows are shown by both northern & southern aisles betraying the Early English Gothic dating for theses structures. This rebuild continued into the early 14th century, most windows are Decorated style from the first half of that century. Others show a dating from the 17th century, an unusual period for major church work. Like most churches restoration work followed in both the 19th and early 20th centuries, the 1872 work replacing much of the roofing whilst that of 1902 widened the northern aisle, the chapel and vestry. As Pevsner rightly states, however, the church is nothing unusual, a typical much altered medieval church, it is the Anglo-Saxon sculpture that makes St Margaret a place to visit. Theses sculptures, tentatively dated to either the late 8th or early 9th century are "startling in style" as Pevsner puts it and are unique across Europe. It is believed the sculpture came to Fletton after a fire partially damaged nearby Peterborough Abbey. They are a national treasure held within a minor suburb of a modern new town of a city. Fletton Avenue has street parking, use the side favoured by the residents, and the usual entrance is by a wooden gateway set into corner of the junction with Church Lane, a lengthy footpath leading to the churchyard, whilst this is capacious the church is hemmed in both to the east & west by closely set trees limiting the views available to the photographer.