England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Saxby St Helen

The Parish

The parish of Saxby (there are two Saxbys in Lincolnshire) is situated in the western part of north Lincolnshire. Saxby St Helen is one of a number of linear parishes that run eastwards from the ancient Roman road of Ermine Street, nowadays the A15. Saxby St Helen is about 9 miles north of the city of Lincoln and 7 miles southwest of the market town of Market Rasen. There is not much of a village to Saxby St Helen although there is a compact hamlet grouped around the church. The parish is sited on land which slopes eastwards from Ermine Street and the settlement is placed where that slope levels out at about 20 metres above sea-level. This is prime agricultural land despite the presence of a rather stony soil and the fields are large and bare of features. In common with many parishes Saxby St Helen was small, barely 1,400 acres and supported a small population, too, barely 150 parishioners. In Domesday times the land was held by Eudo Fitzspirewick and supported 5 ploughs and 2 mills.

The Church

St Helen's church is secreted away behind houses accessed off a curving lane that runs south from the main village lane. Even here, where that lane ends, the way to the church is enclosed by a hedged footpath running between two farms. The church is quite unusual for an English parish church being built in a Mediterranean style for the local landowners, The Earls of Scarbrough, as a mortuary chapel as well as a parish church. The building dates from 1775 and is graced by fine Tuscan columns across a portico. The main body consists of nave and apse and all is topped by a bell-turret. Whilst the graveyard is hemmed in to the east by the neighbouring farms to south and west there are extensive views across the surrounding farmland.