England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Wilmington St Michael & All Angels

The Parish

The parish of Wilmington lies in northwestern Kent not too far from its coastline with the outer Thames Estuary. Wilmington is located roughly 1 mile south of the town of Dartford and spreads either side of the busy A2 road which links London with Canterbury. Wilmington is a village which has changed markedly over the years, early maps show the village concentrated around the junction of the A225 road (Dartford to Sevenoaks) with the B225 (Dartford to Swanley) with a tail extending southwestwards passing the church to a second concentration in an area dominated by cherry orchards. As Dartford has grown, and following all of the modern developments in the area, Wilmington has nowadays become merely a southern suburb of its larger neighbour. Orchards were very much its dominant crop at the time of this transcript and the village was well known for the cherries it produced amongst other soft fruit, arable farming also was present and almost 25% of the parish acreage was set as woodland for coppicing and the products it produced. Modern developments have come aplenty, the A2 road, as traversed by the Canterbury pilgrims has become a fast dual-carriageway highway that cuts between two halves of Wilmington whilst to the east London's orbital motorway, the M25, skirts Wilmington parish. Wilmington is drained northwards by the River Darenth which joins with the Cray before entering the outer Thames estuary a couple of miles west of the iconic Queen Elizabeth II Bridge. Wilmington sits on the fore-plain north of the North Downs at around 30 metres above the sea, southern views are dominated by that rising ground which reaches around 70 metres at nearby Swanley. Wilmington parish was fairly typically sized for a southern rural parish, covering a little over 1,700 acres it would have supported a population of around 850 parishioners. Wilmington is not mentioned in Domesday Book.

The Church

St Michael's church sits on the western side of the B225, here named Church Hill, about 300 yards southwest of its junction with the Dartford to Sevenoaks road. Whilst the church is interesting in its architecture it is, in fact, almost entirely 19th century in its present state. As Pevsner states "all that is left of the medieval church is the western end of the nave", all else being heavily changed or rebuilt. There is much discussion about the earliest date of fabric remaining, Pevsner identifies a modified lancet window of the 13th century Early English Gothic period on that western nave wall whilst others point to wall-stubs and a single southern window showing single-splay as being even perhaps pre-Conquest. Suffice it to say any remaining early fabric is comprehensively overshadowed by the relatively modern. Work began in 1839 to redesign the church, a new northern wall being added to the north aisle, it southern counterpart being also modified in 1881, the east soon followed in 1884, a new western porch in 1909 and in 1922 the western arcade was rebuilt. Church Hill is of sufficient width to allow careful on-road parking outside the churchyard, the photographer will, however, enter through the lychgate with dismay as the church is surrounded by dense trees with only a tiny set of angles left to enable one to adequately record this building.