England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Little Coates St Michael

The Parish

The parish of Little Coates sits in the extreme northeast of Lincolnshire, prevented from being a coastal parish by a thin strip of land occupied by neighbouring Great Coates & Great Grimsby, sitting roughly 3 miles west of the port of Grimsby (correctly Great Grimsby but usually shortened today). Little Coates sits on the A1136 road which heads westwards from Grimsby towards Immingham. Modern Little Coates is a mere suburb of its larger neighbour but early maps show a small isolated village sitting south of the A1136 along the modern Little Coates Road, with the church isolated away to the west on that main road. Like most Lincolnshire villages Little Coates would have been a farming village, the site sits on the eastern banks of the River Freshney which would have given it access to rich pastures to vary the methods from the normal arable, this would have been on more drier land. The parish is drained the short distance to the North Sea by the River Freshney, its exit nowadays swamped by industrial estates and industrial works that line this part of the coast. All of Little Coates sits below the 10 metre contour with the exception of parts of its golf course which are a local high point not exceeded until you reach Aylesby which hits 26 metres. Covering just under 1,100 acres Little Coates parish was toward the small end of Lincolnshire's scale which would have supported a population of close to 50 parishioners, many more in today's modern developments. Despite its small size Little Coates does merit a mention in Domesday Book, it was shared between Bishop Odo of Bayeux and Drogo de la Beuvriere and could muster merely 4 ploughs and some meadow.

The Church

As already mentioned St Michael's church sits alongside the A1136, on its northern side just east of the crossing of the River Freshney. The church is one of two halves, rather the modern "half" is over half of its fabric. The early portion formerly the nave and chancel with a southern aisle dates from the late 14th into the 15th century and bears the Perpendicular style of that period, a window or two in the arcade is in the slightly earlier Decorated styling. To this early portion almost a whole new church was added in 1914 forming a new nave and chancel in a late 13th century (Early English Gothic) style, the newer portion being larger than the medieval part to which it partially supercedes. The participants in these marriages would scarcely recognise St Michael as the church in which they married. As the A1136 (Great Coates Road) is busy with traffic it is fortunate that an area has been created for parking to the west of the site allowing an extended visit. A short flight of stone steps leads through gate posts into the churchyard, sadly the churchyard is festooned with many trees, many taking away the favoured photographer's aspects and making for something of a challenge to adequately record the church.