England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Eaton St Andrew

The Parish

The parish of Eaton lies in eastern central Norfolk roughly 3 miles southwest of the medieval city of Norwich. Eaton sits on the former route of the A11, which, thankfully, now finds a new route passing the former village, connects Norwich via Thetford and on to London. Whilst Eaton was, at the time of this transcript, a separate crossroads village sitting on the A11, it was separated from its twin settlement of Cringleford, across the Yare, by a narrow humped bridge, a source of immense traffic congestion until the A11 was re-routed. Early maps show Eaton grouped around the crossroads formed by Bluebell Road and Church Lane with the main road and separated from the expanding city by nurseries, fields and allotments with even a lime works within today's golf course. Over the centuries Norwich has engulfed Eaton such that it is merely a suburb of this urban area, albeit the crossroads forms still the centre of this village within a suburb. Like most Norfolk parishes Eaton would have primarily been an arable farming area, some market gardening would have occurred to support the nearby city and the water-meadows of the Yare valley would have provided some pasture. The corn mill it shared with Cringleford provided some variation in employment. Today it is an integral part of the wider city and contiguous with the urban area, merely a suburb and dormitory. The Yare drains the parish southwards, passing around Norwich and then east to meet the North Sea through the port of Great Yarmouth. Eaton is sited at between 10 and 30 metres on a rising site away from the river, land continues to rise gently toward the city reaching local high points of around 34 metres in places. Eaton parish was fairly typically sized for an east Norfolk rural parish, covering close to 1,300 acres it would have supported a population of close to 500 parishioners, many thousands more today. In Domesday times Eaton was a holding of King William, himself, a modest rural manor offering just 4 ploughs, some meadow & woodland and a mill plus that which was shared with Cringleford.

The Church

St Andrew's church sits south of Church Lane, partially hidden from that road by fronting properties. As Pevsner states, prior to the construction of Eaton's supermarket & its car park and the modern 1990s housing that surrounds it it would have once stood prominently in open ground. The church is one which has seen much restoration which makes determining the true age a little tricky. Pevsner assigns the main body of the church to the 13th century on the evidence of lancet style windows, a characteristic feature of the Early English Gothic style. The western tower is, however, later and typically in the Perpendicular style found across the county. The neat flushwork panelling and battlements setting off the rather plain construction which otherwise is shown. The major Victorian restoration is one of the early 1860s and was a fairly thorough refresh of the church. Even in more recent times, a "worship area" of 1992-3 was added outside the former southern doorway, an addition Pevsner found to "perhaps too tall for the original building". Parking is available in nearby streets or, indeed, in the supermarket car park, the churchyard, reached by a short footpath still has the old flint & brick wall surround and is largely obstacles free for the photographer.