England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Crowland St Mary, St Bartholomew & St Guthlac

The Parish

The parish of Crowland lies in the extreme southwest of Lincolnshire, indeed it forms not only part of the border with neighbouring Cambridgeshire but also with that of neighbouring Northamptonshire. Crowland is a large village and formerly a market town situated about 7 miles northeast of the Northamptonshire city of Peterborough and about 6 miles south of Spalding. Crowland sits astride the A1073 road which connects the two places, thankfully the road now bypasses the village to the east. Crowland has a long history having been reputedly founded along with its Abbey in the early 8th century. The story is that Crowland, a former island within the Fens, was the site of a hermitage chosen by St Guthlac and grew into a significant monastic site, the village growing around it into a market town. The area around Crowland has seen many changes over the centuries, it would have been a mixture of wild marshland crisscrossed by causeways with meandering rivers and an abundance of wildlife. The hand of man has since wrought a tamed and drained landscape of billiard-table flat fields growing a vast variety of crops from wheat & barley through to numerous vegetables and the bulbs that have made nearby Spalding famous. Crowland sits on the eastern banks of the River Welland which flows northwards to The Wash and the North Sea but many man-made drains, sluices and pumps drain the parish. Crowland sits at just 2 metres above the sea and there are no contours, except for the "0" contour for many miles around. Parishes within the reclaimed fen are typically rather large for southern Britain and Crowland is one of the larger, at around 13,000 acres it is more reminiscent of an upland northern parish but contrasts in landscape quite significantly with those vast unpopulated areas, the parish would have supported a population of around 3,000 parishioners. Strangely despite the presence of an abbey there is no specific mention of Crowland in Domesday Book.

The Church

Crowland's parish church dedicated to the three saints is housed in the former north aisle of the abbey and is best accessed from Church Lane which lies just to the east of the former route of the A1073 through the village. The abbey was founded in 716 but nothing of that date survives, the abbey was, of course subject to Henry VIII's dissolution and was not helped to remain intact by being used as a defensive position during the English Civil War who constructed defensive earthworks within the site and held out for some time resulting in much damage to the already ravaged building. Much of the abbey is Norman but the church was heavily restored during two restorations of 1860 & through the 1890s. These restoration almost resulted in the rebuilding of the church's portion of the site but were necessary to keep the church from falling into ruin. The site is large and surrounded by a low local brick wall, there being many entrances. Although the site has many trees and indeed much ruined remains of the abbey it is fairly friendly in respect to photography.