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

The Parish

The parish of Stragglethorpe lies in southwestern Lincolnshire just a short distance from its border with neighbouring Nottinghamshire. Stragglethorpe is located roughly 8 miles east of the Nottinghamshire town of Newark upon Trent and sits a mile south of the busy A17 road which connects Newark with Sleaford. Stragglethorpe is a small village with most properties tucked away inside a loop of the kane which leads south from the A17, the village has few facilities having lost its shops and inns over the years and was never significantly larger. A typical arable farming parish, Stragglethorpe sits on the heavier soils of the Jurassic clays, the landscape is dominated by cereal fields. Stragglethorpe is drained northwards by small tributaries of the River Brant which joins the Witham to the south of Lincoln with the latter reaching the North Sea through the port of Boston. Stragglethorpe is sited at just 15 metres above the sea and sits on something of a plain below the limestone escarpment which rises to just over 100 metres some 3 miles to the east. Even by Lincolnshire standards Stragglethorpe was a small parish, its acreage barely reach 700 acres and it would have supported fewer than 100 parishioners. Stragglethorpe is not specifically mentioned in Domesday Book.

The Church

St Michael's church sits on the northern edge of the village and is accessed by farm's drives from Stragglethorpe Lane. For such an unimportant small place it is remarkable that St Michael is ancient and probably has its origins in the 11th century and pre-Conquest times. A section of the western wall shows Anglo-Saxon styles and may well date to the earliest part of the 11th century. Whilst the church is small, just nave & chancel topped by a western bellcote it shows a wealth of styling covering the Transitional period when style changed from Norman Romanesque through to Early English Gothic, such is the complexity of motifs that Pevsner cannot assign a dating sequence Like many churches there is evidence for late medieval rebuilding, windows in the Perpendicular style and those in the northern aisle possibly later still but the church did not receive any substantial Victorian rework and still retains plastered internal walls overlooking 18th century woodwork. The church sits surrounded by farm buildings and other converted to holiday lets and is best approached northwards from the village centre. Sadly the churchyard has many trees making life difficult for the photographer.