England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
East Wickham St Michael

The Parish

The parish of East Wickham lies in the extreme northwest of Kent around 4 miles east of Greenwich. East Wickham sits on the A209 road which connects Woolwich with Bexley. Once a discrete and separate small village East Wickham has over the years been engulfed by the growing metropolis of metropolitan Greater London until today it is an integral part of the capital's urban area and contiguous through that vast urban space. At the time of this transcript East Wickham would have been a small to medium sized farming village with the farming acreage roughly equal parts arable and pasture. Modern developments have passed through the area with two North Kent railway lines passing to both north and south of East Wickham without providing it with a station. Much drainage is today sub-surface but a small creek heads eastwards to reach the Outer Thames Estuary near Erith. East Wickham is sited at around 40 metres above the sea, the landscape rises fairly gently from the Thames reaching a little over 60 metres in nearby Bostall Woods. East Wickham parish was fairly typically sized for a rural Kent parish, covering just over 2,300 acres it would have supported a population of close to 550 parishioners, a figure which is considerably higher today. Like many suburban parishes population was growing exponentially during this period and the number of marriages recorded in this transcript is more consistent with a population 4 times greater than that recorded in early gazetteers. East Wickham is not specifically mentioned in Domesday Book.

The Church

St Michael's church sits in the eastern side of the A209 (Upper Wickham Lane) immediately south of the junction with the road to Upper Belvedere. Curiously the church is no longer Anglican, that having moved to a modern building close by and to the south. The former church of St Michael is now utilised by the Greek Orthodox church. Pevsner's description is short reflecting that the church has been much modified in Victorian and later times but noting two genuine lancet windows of the Early English Gothic style on the northern face, the presence of this style places the church's origins to the early 13th century. Little of that evidence, however, remains in a church which has a basic nave and chancel with a spirelet at the western end. Much of the church was completely rebuilt in the early 19th century and that spirelet dates only to 1897. The western end has been much altered in modern times by the addition of a glass frontage, not necessarily in keeping with a medieval building. Street parking is limited close by but can be found south of modern St Michael's. THe old church sits above road height with a brick wall buttressing the churchyard, a density of trees within makes for a difficult subject for the photographer.