England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Wookey St Matthew

The Parish

The parish of Wookey lies in northern central Somerset roughly 2 miles west of the city of Wells. Wookey sits on and mostly north of the B3139 road which links Wells across the Levels with Wedmore. Wookey is a mid-sized and compact village with properties mainly built on the northern side of a small stream, the infant River Axe, which feeds into the drainage system of the Levels. A few properties also sit on the B3139 too. Like most Somerset villages Wookey would have primarily been a farming village, the rich grazing of the ofttimes flooded Levels providing for cattle whilst the isolated limestone "islands" featured chiefly sheep. The local limestone would also have been extensively quarried for building stone. To the north of the village, and on the southern edges of the nearby Mendip range, is Wookey Hole, a show cave and visitor attraction and one of Somerset's main visitor draws. Modern developments have come and left from Wookey, a railway line skirting the foot of the Mendips from Wells to Cheddar having been closed and largely dismantled. Wookey's small stream heads westwards and soon becomes the broader river Axe within the Levels, once out into the flatter land it continues northwest through much man-influenced drainage schemes to eventually reach the outer Bristol Channel immediately south of Weston super Mare. Wookey is sited at around 20 metres above the sea, it sits surrounded by isolated knolls of coralline limestone each reaching a little over 100 metres in height but northwards rises the imposing ridge of the Mendip range with local high spots of 261 metres. Wookey parish was one of the larger parishes in its county, covering just over 3,400 acres it would have supported a population of around 1,200 parishioners. Wookey is not mentioned in Domesday Book.

The Church

St Matthew's church sits almost centrally within the village on the southern side of Church Road. St Matthew reveals its early origins only in its eastern window, an Early English Gothic piece from the 13th century showing the lancet style windows of that era. This fragment of the earliest church sits amongst the remainder of the church which shows a rebuilding during the great church-building era of the Perpendicular. Documentary evidence reports that the chancel was in a semi-ruinous state in 1423 and it is likely that this disrepair is what prompted the almost complete rebuilding of the church. Most of the remaining fabric carries an early 15th century date whilst the southeastern chapel carries a date of c1555, being built to house the reamins of a brother of that times' Bishop of Wells. Like most churches there was a Victorian restoration, in this case it came in th early 1870s and attended mainly to the roof of the chancel whilst generally refreshing other parts. Whilst Church Road is narrow it widens east of the entrance making for easy street parking. A gated pathway runs alongside the churchyard with a flagged stone path leading to the church. The western end of the church is rather too tightly enclosed within trees for the photographer's comfort but other angles are more readily available.