England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Thuxton St Paul

The Parish

The parish of Thuxton is located in central Norfolk roughly 6 miles southeast of the market town of East Dereham. Thuxton sits just east of the B1135 road which links East Dereham with Wymondham. Thuxton is a decidly rural parish with no real village defined as such, a collection of properties gather along the lane leading northeast from the B1135 otherwise just a loose aggregation of farms & cottages across the wider parish. Like most Norfolk parishes Thuxton would have, and indeed still is, an arable farming parish with cereals in the main  supported by more modern crops such as beet & oil seed. Modern developments have come to Thuxton, a branch railway line connecting East Dereham with the Norwich to Ely railway line at Wymondham has since been downgraded to a heritage line but plans are in place seeking to reopen it to previous services. Thuxton sits amongst the headwaters of the River Yare which drains the parish eastwards, skits gthe city of Norwich and reaches the North Sea through the port of Great Yarmouth. Thuxton is sited at around 30 metres above the sea in a shallow valley within gentle terrain that rises to a plateau-like area just over 50 metres in height. This area of the county has many small parishes and Thuxton was one of these, covering just over 1,000 acres it would have supported a population of around 100 parishioners. In Domesday times Thuxton was a much larger place of 28 households, shared by King William and two others its assets amounted to 11 ploughs, the usual meadows & woodland and there was also 2 mills, a larger place than today's hamlet.

The Church

St Paul's church sits on the southern side of Station Lane immediately west of the station of the Mid-Norfolk Heritage Railway. Like many small rural churches St Paul has ancient origins albeit little remains of its earliest periods due to later changes. Pevsner indicates masonry both in the basal stages of the western tower and also in the northern wall of the nave that shows features of the very early 11th century, Saxon-Norman in style and perhaps pre-Conquest. It is to the late medieval and the 15th century that the significant changes were made, documentary evidence from donations in wills date the building of the present tower to 1416, that early 15th century date being within the Perpendicular styles flourishing and that style is evident throughout the remainder of the church. The tower's unusual top with its octagonal top fitted to a square base with the use of broaches is clearly the stand-out feature of what is otherwise a typical Perpendicular Norfolk church. Like most churches the Victorians had their usual restoration, in this case it came late in their period, 1896 - 1898. Outside the church there is a semi-circular area which is used for parking. The entrance-way is shaded by mature trees but the churchyard opens out once through, the church stands back from the entrance with trees gathered close to its eastern end which do slightly limit the views available to the photographer.