England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Hawksworth St Mary & All Saints

The Parish

The parish of Hawksworth lies in southeastern Nottinghamshire not too far from the joint borders with both Lincolnshire and with Leicestershire. Hawksworth is a small and compact village which sits roughly 8 miles southwest of the market town of Newark on Trent and can be found a little over 3 miles east of the A46 road which connects Newark with Leicester and which follows the ancient Roman Fosse Way. This is a fertile area of the county and Hawksworth would have, and indeed still does, meet its income largely from arable cropping, today cereals, beet and oil seed form the dominant mix, at the time of this transcript a more rotational basis would have applied. Hawksworth is drained northeastwards by the Back Dyke which soon meets the River Devon and in turn the nearby Trent for its journey to the North Sea arriving through the Humber Estuary. Hawksworth sits on a broad plain at around 20 metres above the sea, land only gently rises westwards to river cliffs abutting the course of the Trent where a little over 70 metres is reached. Hawksworth parish was one of the county's smaller, covering only 750 acres it would have supported a population of close to 200 parishioners. In Domesday times Hawksworth was equally modest, held largely by Gilbert of Ghent it could only muster 5 ploughs and some meadows.

The Church

St Mary & All Saints' church sits at the heart of its small community on the junction of Main Road & Town Street. Whilst the church has early origins it is one which has been much modified in more recent times and would probably be barely recognisable for the subjects of this transcript. A reset Norman Romanesque style tympanum proves that a church has been here since early times albeit the earliest remaining pieces, the tower & chancel arches, are 13th century and from the short-lived Transitional period between Norman and Early English Gothic. Also 13th century and more purely Early English is the basal stone stage of the western tower and a reset, again, lancet window. That western tower was rebuilt in the 17th century at which time the nave roof dates. A further series of rebuilds follows in later times, the nave in the early 1810s, the northern aisle in 1837 and finally the chancel in 1851; between these rebuilds they amount almost to a completely new building, albeit there is some re-use of early fabric as indicated by the re-sets. Main Road is sufficiently wide to allow for careful parking, the churchyard is walled in both brick and local stone with metal gates facing Main Road. There are trees and neighbouring buildings fairly close and the tower is almost flush to the road so the photographer has only a limited set of acceptable angles to choose from.