England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Luddington St Oswald

The Parish

The parish of Luddington lies in the extreme northwest of Lincolnshire forming a stretch of the border with neighbouring Yorkshire. Luddington is located roughly 7 miles northwest of the industrial new town of Scunthorpe, the intervening River Trent makes the road journey much longer! Luddington sits on the B1392 road which loops around this area of low-lying land passing by the Trent to Althorpe. Whilst the parish takes its name from Luddington village, there is a second, marginally larger, settlement namely that of Garthorpe, a couple of miles to Luddington's northeast, which had the status of mere tything. Luddington consist of a triangular junction with properties lining all three roads leading away from it, Garthorpe has a more complex junction but equally lines its routes with properties. This area of Axholme is very low-lying and much influenced by man's drainage activities; at the time of this transcript much would have been grazing marshland and the associated activities of thatch harvesting and wildfowling would have been important too, today much of the area is vast fields of cereal or other arable crops. Much of the drainage of the area was created by the activities of the 17th century Dutch engineers including the famous Vermuyden, however to the south of Luddington lies the Paupers' Drain believed to be earlier and created by workers as a poor relief project. All water ultimately makes its way to the nearby Trent and thence to the North sea through the Humber Estuary. Both Luddington & Garthorpe sit below the 5 metres contour and much of the surrounding landscape is at that or even lower levels, to the west this extends for many miles with the highest nearby land being east of the Trent reaching 67 metres on Alkborough Cliff.Parishes with large reclamation areas tend to be large and at 3,700 acres Luddington parish is large for its county, within that acreage and split between the two main settlements a population of close to 1,000 parishioners would have been supported. By contrast in Domesday times Luddington & Garthorpe, both holdings of Geoffrey de la Guerche could muster between them just 8 ploughs.

The Church

St Oswald's church sits in splendid isolation just over a half mile northeast of Luddington in an amongst vast fields and accessed along Church Lane. Sadly this is not some medieval splendour but a Victorian replacement replacing an earlier church on the same site. Built in the 1850s it would not have been the venue of these marriages. It is believed that the previous church was a Saxon pre-Conquest foundation but that fell into ruin leading to its demolition. Today's church features a spectacular tall broach-spire which is something of a landmark across the flat landscape of the area. Architecturally the present church did not stir Pevsner who's description is short, covering just 4 lines of largely descriptive text. Church Lane finishes at the churchyard gates where, with careful parking, a car may be left. Access continues along a tree-lined pathway for 40 metres or so until reaching the square churchyard, within there are no obstacles to the photographer albeit a tight squeeze to get sufficiently far to encompass that spire.