England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Spixworth St Peter

The Parish

The parish of Spixworth lies in eastern Norfolk roughly 4 miles north of the city of |Norwich. Spixworth sits about a mile west of the B1150 road which links Norwich with the market town of North Walsham. Spixworth has greatly changed over the modern period, early maps show a tiny estate village clustered around the junction of the Buxton Road and Church Lane. Spixworth was an estate parish dominated by the grounds of Spixworth Hall, sadly the early 17th century mansion of the local Peck family was demolished in 1855. Modern development of Spixworth as a suburb of the nearby city has created an estate of almost square proportions spreading between the Buxton Road and the B1150, a modern development supporting commuting into the city. At the time of this transcript Spixworth would have been a typical Norfolk arable farming parish. Spixworth is drained eastwards by the Stone Beck which meets the Bure to the west of Wroxham before joining the other Broadland rivers in meeting the North Sea through the port of Great Yarmouth. Spixworth is sited at around 15 metres above the sea in gentle terrain where local heights of above 25 metres are rare for some considerable distance. Spixworth parish was toward the smaller end of Norfolk's scale at just over 1,200 acres it would have supported a population of close to 50 parishioners. In Domesday times Spixworth was equally small, a holding of Roger de Poitou offering merely a single plough, a small meadow and a mill, presumably on the Stone Beck.

The Church

St Peter's church stands at the junction of Buxton Road and Church Lane, the original notional centre of the small settlement. Ones attention is immediately drawn to the rather spindly northwestern tower, a tribute to the builders that such an apparently fragile piece still stands over 700 years after its construction. The majority of the church is early 14th century and shows the Decorated style of that half century. The contiguous nave and chancel are certainly of this period whilst Pevsner speculates that that tower might be the remains of an earlier version of the church, its top-most stages in brick are, however, later and probably 15th century Perpendicular. Also of the Perpendicular style is the southern arcade, whilst the southern porch has recorded will donations of 1499 and the southern aisle also of 1504, both rather late into the Perpendicular period. For once Pevsner fails to mention a Victorian restoration so if one occurred it was clearly light & sensitive. The church's main entrance sits on a rather dangerous blind corner and a car-park has been thankfully arranged further south where visibility is clearer, a path leads behind the roadside hedges back to the churchyard. Sadly for the photographer the church is rather deeply embedded into tightly flanking trees, only the western face being readily accessible and severely limiting the angles available.