England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Elton on the Hill St Michael

The Parish

The parish of Elton on the Hill, nowadays simply Elton, lies in the extreme southeast of Nottinghamshire forming a short stretch of the county's border with neighbouring Leicestershire. Elton is located roughly midway between Nottingham and the Lincolnshire market town of Grantham being roughly 10 miles east of the former and west of the latter, it sits on the A52 road which links the two. Elton is a small crossroads settlement with an inn marking its presence on the main road but most properties lying to both south and north of this busy thoroughfare. Elton would have been, and largely still is, an arable farming parish with most of the acreage devoted to cereals and similar high-value crops. Modern developments have come to the parish, the railway line between Grantham and Nottingham passing through the northern portion of the parish and granting Elton a station which its shares with nearby Orston. A small brook drains the parish northwards into the nearby River Smite which continues northwards until meeting the Trent at Newark on Trent, the Trent continues this northward trajectory until meeting the Humber Estuary and thence the North Sea. Elton is sited at around 40 metres above the sea, its original name coming from the slight rise it represents above the general land level, it is, indeed, the highest land for some considerable distance albeit only 10 metres above the general lie. At only just over 1,000 acres Elton was a relatively small parish reflected also in its small congregation of fewer than 100 parishioners. In Domesday times Elton was a slightly more mid-sized rural holding of Roger de Bully offering 9 ploughs and a 12 acre meadow as assets.

The Church

St Michael's church sits south of the A52 on the eastern side of Sutton Lane, which curves around the churchyard before heading off south. St Michael is a church which has been so substantially restored in Victorian times as to have very little remaining to show its origins, especially externally. Beneath the veneer of Victorian work, however, lies a church which began life in the 12th century in a Norman Romanesque style. It is hard, however, to find much remaining given the nature of the 19th century work, a corbel head and rounded arches here and there are terse reminders of the loss. Pevsner notes from historical record that the southern arcade, which was demolished in 1786, was dateable to the brief Transitional era between Early English Gothic & Decorated styles for around 25 years at the end of the 13th century.  Even the lancet windows displayed on the western tower are not original, the tower being completely rebuilt during the work of 1855 - 1857 which saw the whole church transformed. Sutton Lane is of sufficient width to allow safe on-street parking outside the churchyard which is bordered in iron railings. The close proximity of trees, especially around the western end, does present a few difficulties for the photographer with only a limited set of views available.