England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Ashby by Partney St Helen

The Parish

The parish of Ashby by Partney, there are many Ashbys in Lincolnshire hence the suffix, lies in eastern Lincolnshire roughly 9 miles west of the coastal resort of Skegness. Ashby by Partney sits a mile south of the A158 road which links Skegness with Horncastle. Ashby by Partney is a small and rather linear village stretching from the banks of the River Lymn for between a quarter and a half mile to the northeast. Like most Lincolnshire parishes Ashby by Partney is a farming parish, cereals dominate the easily worked land and broad fields are the norm hereabouts. Ashby by Partney is drained southeastwards by the Lymn which quickly joins the Steeping River, continuing southeast to eventually reach the North Sea at Gibraltar Point. Ashby by Partney is sited at just 10 metres above the sea in a broad valley between two areas of the Lincolnshire Wolds, land only rises gently to local heights of 56 metres on the isolated mound of Dalby Hill to the north of nearby Partney. Ashby by Partney was one of Lincolnshire's many small parishes at just over 900 acres it would have supported a population of close to 150 parishioners. In Domesday times Ashby by Partney was a much larger place than today's small village, held by Earl Hugh of Chester it offered an impressive 18 ploughs together with small amounts of meadow.

The Church

St Helen's church sits slightly away from its village in fields to the northeast of the easternmost end and accessed by footpath from Northfields Road. Sadly the medieval church was demolished in early Victorian times and today's church only built to replace it in 1841, thus it was not the venue for these marriages. Pevsner's account is a terse 3 lines of text in which he only passes minimal comment reflecting that its style is more reminiscent of Georgian themes than its period of construction. Despite the relatively modern build there has still been time for restoration, Pevsner calls it "reordering" during 1892. Parking should be sought in Northfields Road from where a narrow footpath leaves between properties to reach the churchyard. The churchyard, itself, is compact and enclosing for the church leaving little room to get sufficiently far away and requiring a wide lens and ingenuity to fully record this church.