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

The Parish

The parish of Salford lies in the extreme west of Oxfordshire in an area where the complex borders of 4 counties mix in a jumble of peninsulas and enclaves. Oxfordshire here meets Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire in an area where much change took place to county boundaries in the 1974 reshuffle. Salford is located about 2 miles northwest of the small market town of Chipping Norton and sits on and immediately north of the A44 road which connects Chipping Norton with Moreton in the Marsh. Salford is a typical Cotswold village, much use of the local stone gives a distinct character to these villages and the small stone-wall lined fields are also typical of the area. A mixture of farming types would have prevailed in the parish with arable the larger portion. Salford is drained southwestwards by a small tributary of the River Evenlode which is met near Bledington, the latter heads southeastwards joining the Thames to the northwest of Oxford and thence through the capital to the North Sea. Salford is sited at around 140 metres above the sea in rolling limestone countryside where local heights rise almost to 250 metres at the county border. Salford parish was fiarly typically sized for this area, covering just over 1,500 acres it would have supported a population of almost 350 parishioners. In Domesday times Salford was a fairly small place, held by Earl William it could just muster a pair of ploughs together with meadows and pastures but held a half share in a mill.

The Church

St Mary's church sits on the western edge of the village accessed along very narrow lanes, it is better to park in the centre and walk the short distance from the triangular green on Chapel Lane. The present church is evidence of the rather disgraceful approach of Victorians to ancient buildings. In 1845 a largely Norman Romanesque church stood here just 10 years later the whole building was rebuilt. It is true that some portions of the fabric were reused, parts of the southern doorway and the windows of the tower but otherwise this is a new building and not that in which these marriages would have taken place. Chapel Lane leaves the A44 heading northwest and peters out into a group of very narrow lanes and unmade roads by a triangular green, the access path to the church leads around buildings to a churchyard which has a few trees as obstacles but enough remain to satisfy the photographer.