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

The Parish

The parish of Pawlett lies in western central Somerset, indeed it forms part of Somerset's western coastline albeit with the estuary of the River Parrett. Pawlett is located about 5 miles north of the port & market town of Bridgwater. Pawlett is a medium sized and compact village sitting on and mostly west of the A38 road which connects Bridgwater with Bristol, thankfully most traffic nowadays follows the modern M5 motorway which parallels the A38 and Bristol to Taunton rail line through the east of Pawlett parish. The area would have been largely devoted to pastoral farming, much of the parish is low lying grazing marsh. The Parrett which runs a half mile south of the village reaches the Bristol Channel not too far away. Pawlett is sited at around 20 metres above the sea, it sits on a former island of Pawlett Hill which rises to some 30 metres above the largely man-made landscape of the marshes and grazing lands. Pawlett parish is somewhat large, including as it does several man-made extensions, it covered just over 3,100 acres and would have supported a population of almost 600 parishioners. In Domesday times Pawlett was a very small place, held by one Walter of Douai it could offer just a single plough, a small meadow and a scatter of livestock.

The Church

St John the Baptist's church sits just west of the A38 in the southeastern portion of the village separated by housing from this busy road and reached by a metalled footpath. The church has its origins in the Norman period of the 12th or 13th centuries albeit little remains of that period; the southern doorway is cited as the last fragment of that period by Pevsner. Indeed Pevsner is characteristically scathing of the church describing it rather disparagingly as "externally nothing special". The church was partially restored in the 17th century, when most of the internal furnishing also date, and again in the Victorian era to leave today's church. The tarred pathway (driveable) heads westwards from the A38 from a small sign indicating church & church hall, entrance being at the northwestern corner of the churchyard. St John's is rather squeezed into the southwestern corner of the churchyard and is hemmed by trees quite closely at that corner making the photographic angles rather limited.