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

The Parish

The parish of Lilford lies in eastern Northamptonshire separated from neighbouring Huntingdonshire by a short stretch of Clapton parish. Lilford is located roughly 3 miles south of the market town of Oundle and sits about a mile west of the A605 road which links Oundle with Thrapston and the A14 expressway. Lilford is an estate parish, a closed parish where all land was held by a single landholder, the residents of Lilford Hall, and inbound migration discouraged, hence there is no formal village to the parish. Indeed such is the size of Lilford that even its parish status has disappeared with parishioners being obliged to move to Thorpe Achurch for their worship and Lilford church demolished. The Lilford Hall estate dominates the parish owned in succession by the Browne and then, by marriage, the Elmes who built the initial phases of today's hall in 1635. The economy of the parish would have been totally dictated by the needs of the estate, arable farming was in the ascendancy but the parish included water-meadows of the Nene, on which it stands, to vary the activity. The Nene drains the parish northeastwards passing through the city of Peterborough to reach the North Sea through The Wash. Situated on a gentle slope Lilford lies between 30 & 40 metres above the sea, away from the Nene's valley land rises to local heights of just over 70 metres in gently undulating terrain. Lilford parish, when such existed, was fairly typically sized for its area, covering around 1,800 acres it would have supported a population of a little over 100 parishioners. A measure of the impact of the Hall's estate on the parish is illustrated by its entry in Domesday Book where it is sufficiently large to be amongst the largest 20% of settlements recorded in that book, held by Countess Judith it could muster an impressive 15 ploughs, a small meadow and also held a mill.

The Church

St Peter's church no longer exists having been demolished in 1777, as around half of these marriages post-date that demolition it is clear that they physically were solumnised at Thorpe Achurch merely in the name of Lilford parish. The church stood within the estate close to the Nene. The only surviving fabric of the church is a piece of medieval arcade which was placed as a "folly" and landscape feature close to the Nene and within the estate. A cursory web search failed to locate any imagery to illustrate how the church once looked and even early gazetteers are silent as to its nature.