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

The Parish

The parish of Cowden lies in the extreme southwest of Kent forming border with neighbouring Surrey and with Sussex at a 3-counties meet. Cowden is located roughly 9 miles west or Royal Tunbridge Wells and stands just under a mile north of the A264 road which links Tunbridge Wells with East Grinstead in Sussex. Cowden sits only a few yards into Kent, the Sussex border being formed by the Kent Water, a tributary of the River Medway, on which northern banks it sits. A simple crossroads village with most properties gathered around a t-junction of lanes with the village's High Street. Today Cowden is a peaceful rural village, it was not always so. In the 16th & 17th century Cowden was the centre of the Wealden iron-working district, it area providing both the ore and the timber to extract the metal, it is difficult to picture the iron-smelters and their furnace ponds amongst today's small pastures, copses and paddocks. The heavy industry has, of course, long gone and today Cowden is merely a farming parish, the soils are rather poor so pastoral farming dominates. The thick woodland that supplied the furnaces still survives and until relatively recently would have been utilised both for woodland products and for pannage of the village's pigs. Modern developments have come to the parish, the railway line from London to Uckfield passes through granting Cowden a station, albeit one over a mile northeast of the village. Cowden is drained eastwards by the Kent Water which soon meets the headwaters of the Medway, the latter heads largely northeast through Tonbridge and Maidstone before passing the naval docklands of Chatham to reach the Medway's estuary and that of the Thames. Cowden is sited at around 70 metres above the sea in its valley setting, land rises steadily northwestwards to the local high spot, the Iron Age Hill Fort on Dry Hill at 172 metres, the highest ground around. Like most Wealden parishes Cowden required a large acreage to support its population, here it amounted to just over 3,200 acres which would have supported around 700 parishioners. Also like most Wealden parishes Cowden is not mentioned in Domesday Book which has scant coverage in this area.

The Church

St Mary's church sits in the heart of the village at the point where High Street becomes Butterwell Hill. The church has its origins in the early 14th century with the Decorated style evident in both the southern wall of the nave and the northern wall of the chancel, both are built in a local sandstone rubble. The stand-out feature of the church, however, is its rower, curiously placed within the westernmost bay of the nave. This splendid feature is timber-framed and carries a tapering bell-stage and impressive broach spire. The timber framing has been subject to scientific dendro-chronology and given a dating of 1395, the steeple, however, sits on 6 posts which were dated to between 1452 & 1472, evidently early replacements were required. These dates place the structure into the Perpendicular era, the style is also shown by the southern porch so that is probably contemporary. Restoration came early in the 19th century, a northern aisle being added in 1837 whilst a further restoration added the northern vestry in 1884. Both the High Street and Butterwell Hill are well used by locals for on-street parking. The churchyard is entered from the stubby dead-end lane of Church Lane, a block of trees to the southwest of the church is the only obstacle to cause a furrowed brow for the photographer.