England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Hethel All Saints

The Parish

The parish of Hethel lies in southern central Norfolk about 4 miles east of the market town of Wymondham. Hethel is a rather scattered village which sits around a mile west of the B1113 road which connects the city of Norwich through to New Buckenham. There is no real compact village centre to Hethel, properties are scattered loosely around a crossroads blending almost without a break into neighbouring Bracon Ash but never wholly concentrated. Like most Norfolk parishes Hethel would have been dominated by arable farming and that is still the major land-use today. Hethel's main notable feature today is its re-purposed World War 2 airfield, now the testing track for Lotus Cars and the birthplace of the Elan. Hethel is drained southwards by a small tributary of the River Tas which, when met  turns back northeastwards, meeting the Yare to the south of Norwich and then the North Sea through the port of Great Yarmouth. Hethel is sited at around 45 metres above the sea, a level that is at or close to the same for some distance around the parish, barely rising to just over 50 metres westwards towards Wymondham. Hethel parish is typical of eastern Norfolk in being small in extent, covering just over 1,400 acres it would have supported around 200 parishioners. In Domesday times Hethel was shared between two landholders, Roger Bigot had the greater share with a smaller portion in the hands of a priest, Judicael; collectively Hethel could muster 9 ploughs, substantial meadows & woodland and there were 2 mills.

The Church

All Saints' church sits on the northern side of Church Lane, a dead-end sour heading westwards from the main village crossroads. This is a church which has been much modified since its earliest incarnations. The oldest part of the church is the western tower, an unbuttressed tower which shows the characteristic long & short work of pre-Norman style, a style that places the church into the earliest era for Norfolk and probably of the early 11th century. Little else remains of this period as the main body of the church was undoubtedly replaced during the great church-building era of the Perpendicular, the southern porch being the best preserved portion of that era. It is to the 17th and later centuries that the remainder comes, both nave and northern aisle windows are typical of the 17th century whilst in the 18th significant change was wrought. A northern chapel was converted into a the mausoleum for the local Branthwaite family in the first half of that century, being completed in time for the first internment in 1740. Finally in the early, pre-Victorian, 19th century major restorations were completed which replaced the chancel windows and added a faux-Gothic doorway to the east. Church Lane is narrow but the verge is wide permitting parking, the churchyard is neatly hedged, the hedge being trained as an archway above the entrance gates. Once within there are no substantial obstructions to photography.