England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Wootton St George

The Parish

The parish of Wootton lies in southern central Northamptonshire roughly 2 1/2 miles south of the county town of Northampton. Wootton lies immediately east of the fast dual-carriageway of the A45, an upgraded road which links Northampton through to the M1 Motorway. At the time of this transcript Wootton was a discrete small to mid-sized village, separated by rural countryside from its larger neighbour, with most properties gathered around the church and alongside lanes running to the northeast as well as around an oval of lanes to the church's west. Over the centuries Northampton has expanded and today Wootton has been engulfed within the metropolis which it has become, only nowadays an outer suburb of a built-up area stretching for almost 6 miles from Wootton northwards. Like most villages Wootton would have been a farming community, mostly arable but with roughly 1/3rd devoted to pasture, the parish was dominated by the estate of Wootton Hall which, according to early gazetteers, offered "extensive prospects" amidst "thriving plantations". Modern developments have come thick and fast with the construction of the M1 to the southwest and the A45 to connect to it making for easy communications both to Northampton and the wider country allowing light industry and services to flourish. A small tributary of the Nene drains the parish westwards then north to meet the latte to the west of Northampton, after a long journey the Nene reaches the North Sea through The Wash. Wootton is sited at around 90 metres above the sea in gentle terrain which gradually rises eastwards to local heights around 20 metres or so higher. Wootton parish was fairly typically sized for its area, covering just over 1,900 acres it would have supported a population of close to 800 parishioners. In Domesday times Wootton was a modest holding of Walter of Flanders mustering just 6 ploughs and a small meadow.

The Church

St George's church sits on the eastern edge of the old part of the village at the junction of High Street with Church Hill and standing opposite the school. Pevsner bemoans the somewhat over-zealous restoration of this church which has left the exterior as he states "too much restored to be of interest", at least from an architectural aspect. That restoration, however, masks a church with fabric across the typical ages of the centuries. The earliest remaining features, a lancet style window in the chancel and both doorways date back to the late 13th century and the Early English Gothic period. The western tower is late and Decorated from the early 14th, whilst Perpendicular windows in the chancel and the presence of a clerestory appear to date from an earlier restoration. The work of the Victorians, in 1865, was thorough and replaced both chancel & tower arches as well as that for the chapel. There is no parking in the High Street but street pparking can be found on Church Hill where a sloping path rises into the churchyard. Whilst there are no immediate obstacles around the church to concern the photographer, the western tower sits so close to the churchyard boundary that the best views of that are from outside.