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

The Parish

The parish of St Ives lies in eastern Huntingdonshire separated from neighbouring Cambridgeshire only by a thin strip of Fenstanton & Holywell parishes, it sits roughly 6 miles east of the county town of Huntingdon on the northern banks of the River Great Ouse. St Ives is a market town, much grown in recent times, early maps show the town concentrated on the banks of the Great Ouse just west of today's A1096 road, nowadays it has expanded northwards and westwards with large modern developments north of the A1123 road which links it with Huntingdon. St Ives existed as early as Saxon times when it was known by the name of Slepe, later a Benedictine Priory dependent upon Ramsey Abbey was founded and dedicated to St Ivo, or St Ives, holding the bones of that saint. A market was established here as early as 1110 and quickly became one of the 4 busiest fairs in England along with Winchester, Northampton & Boston. For much of its existence St Ives acted as a regional market for the local agricultural produce, cattle & cheese being specialties, as well as a centre for specialist trades. Its position on the navigable Great Ouse also rendered it as a major inland port connecting upriver to Bedford and downstream to King's Lynn. Modern developments in the form of railway connections to Wisbech, Cambridge & Ely have now closed and been largely removed. Sadly in 1689 a major fire struck the town centre removing most of the town's historical buildings and leaving a prosperous market town largely modern in character. St Ives is drained eastwards and then northeastwards across the nearby Fenland to the North Sea arriving through The Wash. St Ives is sited at the river banks at no more than 2 metres above the sea whilst its more northern suburbs rise to little more than 25 metres in gentle terrain. Fenlamd parishes are often larger than normal rural parishes, St Ives parish covers just over 2,300 acres within which it would have supported a population of around 3,500 parishioners. In Domesday times St Ives was already of sufficient population size as to be amongst the largest 20% of settlements recorded in that book, as already mentioned it was held by Ramsey Abbey and offered an impressive 29 ploughs as well as the usual meadows & woodland.

The Church

All Saints' church, strangely the church is no longer dedicated to St Iv0, sits cheek-by-jowl with the Great Ouse and roughly 400 metres west of the ancient Bridgechapel. Whilst the was a church here as early as 1086 today's church is largely the product of a rebuild in the latter half of the 15th century. That period saw the flourishing of the Perpendicular style of church architecture and All Saints shows it off admirably. The church' piece-de-resistance is, of course, its exceptionally slender and fine steeple. The steeple, however, has a long history of change, today's version is the fourth iteration, the first blew down in a gale of 1748, it was rebuilt again in 1822, a third time in 1880 and after an aeroplane accident toppled it into the northern aisle in 1918 it had to be yet again rebuilt. Elsewhere the church is a fine example of a large market town church in stately Perpendicular with only an 1885 restoration to influence the medieval content. The usual approach is from the west by Church Street where there is some limited street parking outside the churchyard gates, it can also be approached by footpath along the banks of the Great Ouse. Sadly for the photographer the churchyard, itself, is heavily wooded and rather compact making for a real challenge to acquire adequate imagery especially given the height & splendour of that steeple,