England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Tattershall Holy Trinity

The Parish

The parish of Tattershall lies in central Lincolnshire about 9 miles south of the market town of Horncastle. Tattershall is a small market town, itself, and sits on the A153 road which connects Horncastle with Sleaford where it crosses the River Bain & the (now disused) Horncastle Canal. Tattershall sits on the northern side of these two streams and its twin settlement of Coningsby on the southern side. Tattershall's market was granted in the reign of King John but the town never grew to rival its neighbouring markets. The Norman conquerors placed a castle here in 1231 and the town grew up around that site. The site became a collegiate location too with buildings surrounding the parish church but these were dissolved by Henry VIII and have largely disappeared since. Tattershall sits in a low lying region, the landscape nowadays being largely one of reclaimed arable fields stretching as far as the eye can see, at the time of this transcript there would have been much more pastoral farming than hereabouts today. The Bain drains through the Witham to reach the North Sea through the port of Boston. Tattershall is sited at just 5 metres above the sea and it is many miles before higher ground is reached such is flat nature of the terrain. For this area of Lincolnshire Tattershall parish was one of the larger, it covered around 1,600 acres and would have supported a population of just over 900 parishioners. Tattershall is not specifically mentioned in Domesday Book although the land was in the hands of one Eudo Fitzspirewic, one of the conqueror's followers.

The Church

Holy Trinity church sits on the edge of the castle site and just south of the A153 where both are signed to a tourist car park for visitors. Holy Trinity is an impressively large building, 186 feet in length and almost totally in the limestone from Ancaster in southern Lincolnshire. The building is very well documented in written sources so much so that even the name of the master mason (John Cowper) is known. Begun in 1469 it was almost complete by the end of the 15th century. The building is unusual in having a largely cruciform plan, unusual that is for the Perpendicular era, with a central crossing tower and transepts. Pevsner seems to have mixed feelings of the building describing it as "gaunt in its absence or ornamentation" and blames the founders for wanting "size rather than pretty decoration". The building is certainly impressive and so much so that, for once, the Victorians left well alone. Good paths lead from the car park via the church site and onwards to the castle which stands to the west of Holy Trinity, the churchyard is just sufficiently sized to allow the impressive size to be captured in photographs.