England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Otterden St Lawrence

The Parish

The parish of Otterden lies almost centrally within Kent and about 7 miles southwest of the town of Faversham. Otterden lies within an area totally devoid of numbered roads, the closest such road being the A20 from Maidstone to Ashford which lies over 3 miles to Otterden's south. Otterden is an estate settlement, there is no village of Otterden marked upon modern maps and the landscape is dominated by the grounds of Otterden Place, a parkland surrounding the early 19th century mock-Tudor house. There are a few independent farms surrounding the estate but the majority of land was once held by a single landowner resulting in a closed parish and no defined village. The economy of the parish would have been dominated by the needs of the estate and farming in a mixed regime would have been the main; the parish also had close to 30% of its acreage set to managed woodland. Otterden sits on the northern, dip, slope of the chalk North Downs, the porous chalk allowing little surface drainage, water makes its way largely underground to the Swale estuary to the north. Otterden is sited at around 140 metres above the sea with land continuing to rise southwards to reach almost 200 metres on the crest of the North Downs to the south. This area has many small parishes and Otterden was fairly typical, covering just over 1,400 acres it would have supported a population of around 200 parishioners. In Domesday times Otterden was a small holding of Bishop Odo of Bayeux and could merely offer a single plough and the typical meadow & woodland.

The Church

St Lawrence's church sits within the grounds of Otterden Place to the east of the house, the grounds & house are privately owned by an electronics company but visits to the church are permitted. The church certainly is an unusual one and of an unusual period for church-building. The previous medieval church was swept away in the mid-18th century and what Pevsner describes as "a red brick box" erected to serve the relatively small congregation. He mentions the big western doorway of Portland stone and the panels above but little else in a short description of what has little "architectural expression". He reserves his praise for the array of internal monuments, most transferred and re-housed from the medieval predecessor. Access to the church is from Bunce Court Road where a driveway leads across the parkland setting to house and church, shortly after a right turn takes you to the church which sits in an open setting with no obstacles for the photographer.