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

The Parish

The parish of Chesterton lies in eastern Oxfordshire not too far from its border with neighbouring Buckinghamshire. Chesterton is located about 2 miles southwest of the town of Bicester and sits under a mile northwest of the busy A41 road which links Bicester with the M40 and onwards, as the A34, to Oxford. Chesterton is a small village built around a crossroads with a northern extension extending to the former grounds of Bignell House estate which formed much of the parish acreage, the house, built in 1866, has been demolished but its parkland survives. Chesterton sits on the course of the ancient Roman Akeman Street which connected the Roman "castri" of Bicester and Cirencester and can be traced intermittently across the landscape. Chesterton sits within the Oxfordshire Vale with Jurassic clays underlying, this gave for heavy soils which led the area to be more pastoral than it has become today with the benefit of modern machinery. Modern developments have come to Chesterton parish, the modern M40 motorway runs west of the village whilst the railway line linking Bicester with Oxford sits just across the A41, now upgraded to fast dual-carriageway. Chesterton is drained southwards by the Gagle Brook which soon joins the River Ray, in turn the Ray meets the Cherwell at Islip and the Thames before water turns east passing through the capital to the North Sea. Chesterton is sited at around 70 metres above the sea in generally flat terrain where heights of 96 metres at Middleton Park to the northwest represent the highest ground for some distance. At just under 2,900 acres Chesterton parish was towards the larger end of the scale for its area, that acreage would have supported a population of around 400 parishioners. In Domesday times Chesterton, held by Miles Crispin, was also a mid-sized rural manor offering 12 ploughs, typical meadows and woodland together with a mill.

The Church

St Mary's church sits just northeast of the main crossroads within the village and east of Alchester Road. Two distinct phases of the church remain with the earliest portion remnants of a Norman Romanesque church which survived a major rebuild and reorder that is documented as completed with a new reconsecration in 1238. From that earlier 12th century Norman church the northern arcade of three bays survives showing chamfered arches and round piers with scalloped capitals. Its southern equivalent is representative of the new church of 1238 and is in the Early English Gothic style of the early 13th century, complementing the southern arcade is the similarly dated chancel with lancet styled windows of the period too. The final piece of medieval is the western tower and here the Decorated style of the early 14th century is used as it is internally for the sedilia. A few windows show Perpendicular styling but are clearly replacements as is the great east window dating from 1852. Similar work dates from the restoration of 1865 when the western tower also acquired its stair turret. Access is either by a lengthy path from the lychgate on Alchester Road or from the south where a few parking spaces sit on Manor Farm Lane. The churchyard has quite a few mature trees dotted randomly about but these are easily avoided by the photographer.