England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Cheam St Dunstan

The Parish

The parish of Cheam lies in the northeastern portion of central Surrey roughly 3 miles northeast of the horse racing town of Epsom. Cheam sits on the A217 road which London with Reigate and today is very much a suburb of Greater London part of a vast area of largely modern developments of the metropolitan area south of the Thames. The Cheam of this transcript's era was, however, decidedly rural, early gazetteers estimate that approximately 75% of the parish acreage was set to arable with most of the remainder as pastures. In addition to the farming, a rich seam of clay provided raw material for a clay-pipe manufactury which also made chimney & flower pots providing some variation of employment. Early Cheam was a tightly compact village sitting just east of Nonsuch Deer Park, a hunting estate established by Henry VIII which is nowadays a welcome urban park well visited by locals. The railway arrived at Cheam in 1847 and triggered the phenomenal suburban growth that characterises the are today, the original village has been subsumed in modern housing and an integral part of Metropolitan London. On surface drainage has been over-built and most is sub-surface and trending northwest to eventually emerge as the Beverley Brook at Wimbledon Common, even this stream dives below before reaching the Thames through The London Wetland Centre at Barnes.  sits on the rising northern slopes of the North Downs at around 60 metres above the sea, land continues rising steadily southwards with 162 metres reached at nearby Banstead. Cheam parish was fairly typically sized for a southern rural arable parish, covering almost 1,900 acres it would have supported a population that rose during the transcription period from a few hundred to just over 1,100 by its end, the population today being many thousands. Even by Domesday times Cheam was already of sufficient size as to be amongst the largest, by population, 20% of settlements recorded with 42 households; the manor was held by the Archbishop of Canterbury and could muster 17 ploughs as well as the usual meadows & woodland.

The Church

St Dunstan's church sits west of the A217 and some 400 metres north of Cheam's railway station, it sits north of the town's public library and between the two north-to-south running main roads that define that area. Today's St Dunstan is possibly the third iteration on this site, the original medieval church has just its former chancel remaining as the Lumley Chapel, the Lumley family were lords of the manor at one time. This fragment possibly dates from as early as the 12th century and shows Norman Romanesque styling in its round-arched, if blocked, windows as well as evidence of re-working in the late 14th or early 15th century in the Perpendicular style. The second iteration was a brick-built church of 1740 which solely retained the medieval tower. In its turn today's church was built replacing that 1740 building in 1864 so is not the venue for these marriages. Today's church is rather unflatteringly described by Pevsner as "large and dull" albeit its northwestern broach spire does give it a little character. Visitors should make use of the extensive library car park south of the churchyard, sadly for the photographer the churchyard has many mature deciduous trees which require careful planning to avoid in order to obtain satisfactory images.