England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Adwell St Mary

The Parish

The parish of Adwell lies in southeastern Oxfordshire roughly 5 miles south of the market town of Thame. Adwell sits just under a mile southwest of the A40 road which links Oxford with the Buckinghamshire town of High Wycombe. Adwell is a very small place indeed, barely registering on modern Ordnance Survey maps and consisting of the church with a handful of farms and cottages, no real village of which to speak. Adwell sits within the Oxfordshire Vale on thick clays which limited the arable farming possibilities before the development of modern machinery, today the near total pastoral methods have become much more mixed. Despite Adwell's tiny size modern developments have come to the parish, the modern M40 motorway cutting through en route from London to Oxford and on to Birmingham. Adwell is drained westwards by the Haseley Brook which meets, in turn, the River Thame and then the Thames flowing back eastwards through the capital to the North Sea. Adwell is sited at around 90 metres above the sea in a gentle landscape dominated by the isolated knolls of Poppets Hill, Gilton Hill and Adwell Cop each of which rises some 50 metres above the general level Adwell Cop at 144 metres being the local high spot and reputed to hold a former encampment built by invading Danish forces under Cnut. Adwell is one of the smallest parishes in its county, a mere 500 acres of land in which around 50 parishioners could have been supported. In Domesday times Adwell was equally small, a holding of Miles CRispin it offered 4 ploughs and a small meadow but did possess a mill.

The Church

St Mary's church is really the focal point of the parish sitting at the point where the lane from Lewknor performs a sharp left turn. Sadly the church is a Victorian rebuild of what was once a very ancient church, a doorway in its southern wall being in the Transitional Norman style and reused, it indicates the 12th century origins of the building. Today's church largely stems from the rebuild of 1865 and being in the early Decorated style of the beginning of the 14th century is probably not recognisable as the venue for these marriages. The churches centrepiece is its extravagant bell-turret decorated with gables, gargoyles and a short spire. The rebuilt church was clearly of little architectural interest for Pevsner whose account consists of a mere half dozen lines of descriptive text. Parking can be found although large boulders are placed to discourage it from being on the verges. A ramp of steps leads up into the churchyard which is open with most aspects available to the photographer.