England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Blackfordby St Margaret

The Parish

The chapelry of Blackfordby, its mother parish being Ashby de la Zouch, lies in the extreme west of Leicestershire forming a stretch of the county's border with neighbouring Derbyshire. Blackfordby is located roughly 2 1/2 miles northwest of the industrial town of Ashby de la Zouch and sits a half mile south of the A511 road which links Coalville through to Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire. Blackfordby is a small triangular shaped village with most properties enclosed within two lanes that reach the village from the A511. For most of its existence Blackfordby was a simple farming parish with pastoral methods dominant above arable. In the late 19th century exploitation of the local clay pits, fire-clay and coal measures industrialised the area expanding the small village. Today that industry has gone and Blackfordby wits within the newly designated National Forest with large tracts being reforested and covering the scars of past workings. Blackfordby is drained southwards by small streams which merge to form the River Mease, the Mease heads westwards to meet the Trent joining that river for its long journey to the North Sea arriving through the Humber Estaury. Blackfordby is sited around 140 metres above the sea with land rising northwards to local high points touching 184 metres just north of the A511. Roughly 1,100 acres of the extensive Ashby de la Zouch parish was assigned to Blackfordby and this would have supported a population of close to 450 parishioners, it should be noted that most marriages would be documented in Ashby's registers. Blackfordby is not mentioned in Domesday Book.

The Church

St Margaret's church stands on the western side of Main Street just before it leaves the village headed for the A511. Whilst there has been a church of some description here since earliest times, a church is recorded in the 11th century, today's church is a mid-Victorian replacement and not the building in which these few marriages were celebrated. The medieval church which preceded today's church was described as an ancient, dilapidated medieval chapel of ease and was demolished before today's church was built in 1857. Like many such Victorian replacement churches it is built in the faux-Early English Gothic style. Main Street south of the churchyard is well-used for local on-street parking. A steep zigzagging path rises to the churchyard which sits well above road height, sadly for the photographer it is tree-filled with only a limited set of angles available with which to work.