England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Welton le Wold St Martin

The Parish

The parish of Welton le Wold lies in eastern Lincolnshire roughly 3 miles west of the market town of Louth. Welton le Wold stands immediately north of the A157 road which links Louth with Wragby. Welton le Wold is a small village largely built around a right-angled bend in the lane that heads northwards from the A157, much of the parish area is taken up with the parkland associated with Welton Manor which lies north of the main village lane. Like most Lincolnshire parishes it was and is an arable farming parish, the village sits in a valley bottom but either side to both north & south broad arable fields now spread across the Lincolnshire Wolds, today cereals, oil seed and beet dominate but at the time of this transcript a more rotational system would have been in place. In addition to the fields there are 3 distinct patches of woodland which would have been coppiced for woodland products and charcoal. Two eastward flowing streams drain the parish merging to become the River Lud which passes through Louth before being taken up by the coastal plain's drainage system the Louth Canal largely takes the water northwards to reach the North Sea at Tetney Haven. Welton le Wold is sited at around 80 metres above the sea in its valley setting, wolds wise to the southwest and reach 140 metres just south of the A157. This area of the county has slightly larger parishes than many parts, Welton le Wold parish was typical of the area covering just over 2,600 acres, that acreage would have supported a population of close to 350 parishioners, the paucity of marriages is solely caused by the loss due to damage and to the Bishops' Transcripts only recording Baptisms and Burials for most of the covering years, as many as 100 marriages my have been lost in consequence. In Domesday times Welton le Wold was just of sufficient size to creep into the top 20% of settlements by population, in contrast to today's small village, shared between 5 landholders it mustered 11 ploughs, some small meadows and a mill, there is a dichotomy between the total assets as compared to a settlement claiming 59 households

The Church

St Martin's church sits to the east of the descending lane headed from the A157, it is hidden from that lane by woodland with a curving earthen track headed up to it. Whilst there are pieces of the church surviving from the medieval period much of the main body of the church, nave with northern aisle and the chancel, dates from a Victorian rebuild if 1849. The western tower survives in its early form being from the first half of the 14th century and largely in the Decorated style, the tower was given battlements and western door & windows during the later Perpendicular period, either late 14th or early 15th century. Whilst the main body is Victorian the architects have chosen to maintain the Decorated style's motifs perhaps preserving a memory of what came before. A small wooden sign marks the way to the church where the track begins, there is room without blocking for a vehicle to park. The church, unfortunately for the photographer, sits tight to the southern boundary & its trees removing all of the favoured aspects from the portfolio, only views from the north remain.