England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Fradswell St James the Less

The Parish

The chapelry of Fradswell, the mother parish being Colwich from which it is detached, lies in eastern central Staffordshire roughly 7 miles east of the market town of Stone. Fradswell sits about a mile south of the B5027 road which links Stone with Uttoxeter. Fradswell is a tiny place, a former estate parish dominated by the local squire resident in Fradswell Hall, a regency mansion of 3-bays. There is no real village centre merely a scatter of farms and cottages across the wider parish area. Like many Staffordshire parishes Fradswell chapelry would have been dominated by pastoral farming with minimal arable, the balance has moved toward the latter in the later 20th century with the advent of modern machinery & fertilisers. Fradswell is drained southwestwards by the Gayton Brook which soon meets the River Trent, that river makes a lengthy journey through the Midlands before turning north at Newark to reach the North Sea through the Humber Estuary. Fradswell is sited at around 130 metres above the sea at the church in rolling countryside where the local high spots occasionally rise to breach the 200 metre contour around nearby Garshall Green. Around 1,400 acres were assigned to Fradswell chapelry which would have supported a population of close to 250 parishioners, the dearth of marriages recorded is partially due to the damage to the registers but also a tendency to celebrate marriages at the mother church. In Domesday time Fradswell was equally small, held by the Bishop of Chester it offered just 2 ploughs together with typical meadows & woodland.

The Church

St James' church stands north of Church Lane alongside the hall and is accessed by a short track through trees.There is very little left of this church which is medieval despite it being originally built around c1200, only within the chancel and the chancel arch are there genuine medieval fabric with a pair of deeply splayed windows in the chancel and a point to the chancel arch being notable. During the Georgian era the original medieval nave was demolished and rebuilt from the ground up, the lower courses in ashlar the upper courses in brick, the same styling was also used in the new western tower, both builds are recorded as completed in the late 1760s. As is that was not sufficient change a further substantial change was wrought as part of the Victorian restoration of 1852, that work added the 3-bay rock-faced southern aisle, the northeastern vestry and a stair turret for the tower, the remaining medieval chancel was also partially rebuilt further diminishing the early content of the church. Once through the shady trees and into the churchyard there are issues for the photographer as the church sits enclosed within a further "C" shaped arc of trees which restrict the viewpoint markedly, only views from directly east are unaffected.