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

The Parish

The parish of St Mary Hoo lies on the northern coast of Kent about 5 miles north of the city of Rochester. There are three parishes bearing the "Hoo" appellation after the name of the peninsula of lane which spreads northwards from the main portion of Kent and separates the estuaries of the Medway and the Thames. St Mary Hoo is a very small place indeed, not a village as such, merely a scatter of farms and cottages on the edge of the saltmarshes. St Mary Hoo lies about a mile north of the A228 road which connects Rochester with the Isle of Grain and its refineries and port. St Mary Hoo would have been a very remote settlement at the time of this transcript and would have largely earned its living from a mixture of arable farming on the dryer ground together with pastoral farming & wildfowling on the saltings. As a coastal settlement with salt marshes the parish is drained northwards into the Thames estuary mostly by man-made drains. St Mary Hoo is sited at around 40 metres above the sea, the centre of the peninsula being elevated above the coastal marshes, the landscape around the settlement being wide open to big skies as lands falls away to both north & south. St Mary Hoo parish was of a fairly typical size for this area of Kent, it covered around 2,200 acres and would have supported a population of just under 300 parishioners. There is no specific mention of St Mary Hoo in Domesday Book.

The Church

St Mary's church sits on a sharp bend in Hall Lane which leads off the main lane of the peninsula before ending at the marsh edge. The church makes much use of local ragstone and follows the standard design of nave, chancel & western tower. The church has three distinct ages within it, the nave, in the Decorated style of the early 14th century, being the oldest. The tower appears 13th century but Pevsner prefers a Perpendicular style date of late 14th or early 15th centuries. The chancel is of a known date having been rebuilt about 1880. The church sits behind a low ragstone wall and a metal gate on the northern side of the site grants access from Hall Lane. Once inside there are few restrictions to photography.