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

The Parish

The parish of Paston lies in the extreme northeast of Northamptonshire roughly 3 miles north of the city of Peterborough. Paston sits immediately north of the A47 road which links Wisbech through to Leicester. Paston is a much changed area, early maps show it as a small estate village with no real centre merely a loose aggregation around the outside of the estate of Paston Hall. Whilst Paston grants its name to the parish it also included the larger villages of Werrington (the chapelry here was  not licensed for marriages during the period of the transcript), a linear village spreading for a half mile east of the then A15 road, Walton, also on the old A15 and built around a series of junctions, and Gunthorpe, a little to the north of Paston and the smallest of the 3 villages. Today Paston has been engulfed by the modern expansion of Peterborough, one of the major over-spill centres designed to relieve over-crowding in London. The old landscape largely disappeared beneath inter-war suburban housing and light industry and culminated in in the late 1950s social housing estate of Paston Ridings. Nowadays Paston is just the northern area of a vast urban area that stretches for almost 8 miles north to south and 4 from west to east. At the time of this transcript all 4 settlements would have been simple arable farming communities sitting on slightly drier land above the nearby Fenland. Modern developments abound within the old parish area, the East Coast Railway Line from London to Newcastle scrapes the western edges whilst the A47 & A15 roads both have been upgraded to dual-carriageway highways, their ancient routes lost within the sea of urban development. Paston is drained northwards by the man-made channel of Car Dyke which funnels water into the River Welland and thence to the North Sea through The Wash. Paston is sited at around 10 metres above the sea at the parish church with all of the parish below 20 metres, to the west Castoe Hanglands rise to breach the 40 metre contour in a few spots. Covering over 3,100 acres Paston was a large parish for this county, that acreage would have supported a population of close to 950 parishioners. Paston is not specifically mentioned in Domesday Book, whilst Werrington does have an entry it is a regional entry rather than specific to that manor.

The Church

All Saints' church stands at the junction of Fulbridge Road with Hallfields Lane where the entrance lychgate faces a modern suburban sprawl and a roundabout. All Saints has its origins in the 13th century with Early English Gothic styling preeminent. The earliest part of the church is revealed as the northern chancel chapel which Pevsner gives a tentative date of c1225. The church's stand-out piece is its 13th century western tower of c1260 complete with lancets to prove the dating, it carries a broach spire and is a landmark around this suburban environment. The tower stands upon the triple-chamfered tower arch which Pevsner names as the "finest piece in the church". In the mid-14th century the main body received a major upgrade with most of the chancel reset in the Perpendicular styling, a style that is perpetuated in the 4-bay arcades of the nave, its clerestory and the chancel arch. Typical late Victorian restoration only slightly impacted the church with phases conducted in 1881 and 1896. Various side streets off the two main roads offer safe on-street parking, the lychgate leads to an extensive churchyard which sadly does not mean commanding views of the church due the size and placement of several blocks of trees, one alongside the southern face removing all of the favoured angles, only a limited set of aspects are available for the photographer.