England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Broughton Poggs St Peter

The Parish

The parish of Broughton Poggs lies in the extreme west of Oxfordshire forming a lengthy stretch of the county's border with neighbouring Gloucestershire. Broughton Poggs is located roughly 3 miles north of the Gloucestershire market town of Lechlade and sits on and mostly east of the A361 road which links Lechlade with Burford & Chipping Norton. There are actually two settlements now merged which form a single village, Broughton Poggs itself sits on the A361 but has most properties lying clustered around the church and Broughton Hall, a derelict 17th century large house; separated by the Broadwell Brook and slightly larger is Filkins, a linear village lying along the out-and-back loop of lane that connects both to the A361, in reality a single community. Broughton Poggs is a farming community, early gazetteers estimate a 2:1 ratio in favour of arable over pastoral methods with cereals and root crops the main elements. The Broadwell Brook drains the parish southeastwards soon meeting the Thames to the southeast of Clanfield, the Thames passes through Oxford, Reading and the capital on a long journey to meet the North Sea through its estuary. Broughton Poggs is sited at around 90 metres above the sea, to its north land steadily rises in gentle terrain reaching 134 at the Roman Road of Akeman Street. Broughton Poggs parish was long and thin stretching from northwest to southeast and totalling merely a little under 1,100 acres, it would have supported a population of around 150 parishioners. Domesday Broughton Poggs was a larger settlement than that, held by one Murdoch's son Robert it could muster 9 ploughs, meadows and pastures and possessed 2 mills.

The Church

St Peter's church sits tucked away surrounded by farm complexes to the south of most properties in the small village. St Peter is a church with really ancient credentials taking it back to the commencement of stone-built churches, the nave and chancel arch survive from the early Norman period either 11th century or perhaps early 12th century and Romanesque in style, the remarkable northern and southern doorways each has a lintel and tympanum carved from a single large stone, that to the south carrying a sundial. The chancel is later built in the Early English Gothic style of the 13th century and showing the characteristic lancet styled windows with a pair on the eastern wall. Complementing the early main body is the highly unusual western tower, it is oblong being wider as you go further westwards. Pevsner dates the basal stage as c1200 and indicates the bell-stage to be early work too but the upper stages with their plain and pitched roof are 19th century work, probably as part of a typical Victorian restoration which elsewhere in the church was light and sensitive. The access track to the church leaves the main village street immediately alongside the bridge across the Broadwell Brook, it ends at a farm complex and churchyard where parking should respect the farming operations, the churchyard is relatively free of obstacles for the photographer.