England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Church Preen St John the Baptist

The Parish

The parish of Church Preen lies in southern central Shropshire roughly 6 miles west of the small market town of Much Wenlock. Church Preen sits a little over 2 miles west of the B4371 road which follows the crest of Wenlock Edge from Much Wenlock and onward to Church Stretton. Church Preen lies in the shallow vale between Wenlock Edge and The Lawley it is a tiny upland farming community, little more than a hamlet with a few scattered farms and cottages loosely scattered around a junction of lanes. Church Preen owes its foundation to an order of Cluniac monks who made their monastery, in independent cell from that at Wenlock Priory, here in the 12th century. Like much of this area of Shropshire pastoral farming dominates the local economy, the hamlet is fairly high in strikingly undulating terrain and with ancient & nutrient poor underlying rock strata it did not lend itself to arable farming. Church Preen is drained eastwards by a tributary of the Hughley Brook which meets the Severn close to Cressage, from here the Severn has a long journey east and then south to the sea through the Bristol Channel. Church Preen sits on a steeply rising slope with the lowest properties at 190 metres above the sea whilst the highest stand some 40 metres higher, looming to the west stands The Lawley with its top at close to 370 metres. Church Preen was one of Shropshire's smaller parishes, covering just short of 1,200 acres it would have supported merely around 100 parishioners. In Domesday times Church Preen was still in the hands of a Saxon survivor, Helgot of Holdgate and could muster just 3 ploughs and a pig-filled woodland.

The Church

St John's church sits to the east of the hamlet's main lane cheek by jowl with the late 19th century manor of Preen Manor. The church was established for the villagers by the Cluniac monks and is a simple affair as befits such a small congregation. Despite later rebuilding Pevsner is confident in placing the nave into the 12th century and into the Norman Romanesque period, close to the monastery's foundation. The lancet windows on the chancel's northern face betray its later Early English Gothic style and place it into the following, 13th, century. Here the church rested until the 17th century when its gabled porch was added before th major work of the Victorian restorers followed in 1866. Besides almost rebuilding the nave, Pevsner calls it "obliterated", the bellcote was added onto a rebuilt new western wall, the whole church was also re-roofed. Further wok can be found from the 20th century, a southern chapel being added in the early 1920s to complete today's simple church. A small white sign marks the track leading to church & manor, it ends in a broad parking area outside the churchyard which is open and uncluttered with no significant obstacles for the photographer.