England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Grove St Helen

The Parish

The parish of Grove lies in northern Nottinghamshire roughly 3 miles east of the market town of East Retford. Grove sits around 2 miles east of the A638 road which links East Retford through to the A1, Great North Road, at Markham Moor. Grove is an estate village though its Hall is no longer present being demolished in 1951. Most properties in the village lie to the north and west of the Main Street and also north of the parkland which once surrounded the estate. Like most estate villages the economy was guided by the needs of the Hall, here is was largely arable with some pastures on particularly clay-rich areas. Modern developments have come to the area, the East Coast Main railway line from London to Newcastle passes through the southwestern corner of the parish. Grove has rather sketchy drainage, a number of streams rise and then vanish but all trend westwards to the nearby River Idle which takes water northwards before turning east to meet the Trent just south of its confluence with the Yorkshire Dales rivers that make up the Humber Estuary. Grove is sited at around 80 metres above the sea on a hilltop position, a few places rise to 90 metres hereabouts but mostly this is the highest ground for some distance. Grove parish was small for its county covering just under 1,300 acres and supported barely 100 parishioners. In Domesday times Grove, a holding of Roger de Bully, was equally small offering merely 4 ploughs backed by typical meadows and woodland.

The Church

St Helen's church sits just south of the main concentration of village properties standing closer to the Hall's former site. Sadly this church is not the venue for these marriages which took place within its predecessor, described by early gazetteers as "small structure in the later English style, with a square embattled tower, beautifully situated on an eminence, surrounded by trees of ancient growth". That Perpendicular church stood north of the site of today's St Helen. The church that replaced that medieval version was completed in 1882 in a Decorated style from the latter stages of that style and features a neat steeple atop its western tower. Main Street is quiet so careful parking is possible outside the lychgate to which twin paths make their way. The position of the church tight to the northern boundary of the churchyard removes those less-favoured aspects but more usual ones are also beset by trees and thus presenting something of a challenge to the photographer.