England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Flixborough All Saints

The Parish

The parish of Flixborough lies in the extreme northwest of Lincolnshire about 4 miles northwest of the industrial new town of Scunthorpe. Flixborough is located 1 mile west of the B1430 road which heads toward the Humber Estuary northwards from Scunthorpe. Flixborough is a small and compact village with most properties built along the High Street, it sits upon an escarpment overlooking the course of the River Trent. At the time of this transcript Flixborough would have been a typical Lincolnshire farming village, the water-meadows alongside the Trent gave it a more varied farming regime, grazing of cattle, than is typical of its county. Its position on the navigable Trent, however, saw modern developments in the form of a chemical works on the Trent's banks, a works that brought fame & notoriety to Flixborough in 1874 when an explosion rocked the area. The Trent drains the parish northwards the short distance to the Humber Estuary and the nearby North Sea. Flixborough is sited at around 40 metres on its escarpment which rises from sea level, land rises a little more to almost 70 metres at nearby Burton upon Stather. Flixborough parish was typically sized for its area, covering close to 2,600 acres it would have supported a population of just under 250 parishioners. In Domesday times Flixborough was a typical rural holding, held by one Norman d'Arcy it offered 9 ploughs together with substantial meadows & woodland, the latter still present as a long sstrip of woodland cladding the escarpment, Burton Wood.

The Church

All Saints' church sits at the heart of Flixborough on the northern side of the High Street as it passes through the village. Sadly this is the third iteration of church within the village and not the venue in which these marriages would have taken place. The village's original medieval church stood a half mile south of today's site, it was replaced by a new build on the High Street in 1789 and those two churches were the venues concerned. The replacement church was itself replaced by today's church built in 1889. A simple brick edifice consisting of nave and chancel augmented with a southern porch and wooden bell-turret at the western end it is clearly of little architectural interest for Pevsner who's description is limited to 4 lines of descriptive text. High Street in front of the church is narrow but widens to the east of the site where parking on the verge may be found. A low brick wall surrounds the churchyard, the churchyard, narrow from west to east, has restricted angles for the photographer - especially of the western end which is enclosed in trees.