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

The Parish

The parish of Egham lies in the extreme northwest of Surrey forming borders with 3 neighbouring counties, with Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and with Middlesex. Egham is located roughly 5 miles southeast of the Royal town of Windsor and some 20 miles west of London and sits on the A30 road which links London with Winchester and which follows the ancient Roman road headed for Silchester. Egham sits on the southern banks of the Thames at the crossing of the A30 and directly opposite Staines its opposite number to the north. Egham is a much grown place, early maps show a largely linear village rising along the course of the old A30, it now bypasses to the north, for about 3/4s of a mile with little development to either side. Egham parish also has historical connections with the famous meadows of Runnymede famed for the signing of Magna Carta being within its bounds. In addition to Runnymede Egham parish also encompassed a great swathe of Windsor Great Park and its extensive woodland with almost 25% of the parish once covered with woodland much of which would have been managed for forestry products. Egham, today, has spread for a half mile southeast of the A30 and with modern developments has become contiguous with not only Staines but also with the entire urban spread that is Greater London. At the time of this transcript Egham would have been rather rural with pastures alongside the Thames and with arable fields on the drier ground away from the river, there would have been some market gardening supporting the capital and also some river transportation on the navigable Thames to and from the capital too. Modern developments abound, railways arrived in mid-Victorian times and Egham now sits upon the line connecting London with Bracknell and has a station which has hastened some commuter development. More intrusively, however, is London's orbital motorway, the M25, which almost cuts Egham in two with its major junction with the A30 dominating the once peaceful riverbank of the Thames. The Thames drains the parish eastwards passing through the capital and onwards to the North Sea arriving through its extensive estuary. Egham is sited at around 15 metres above the sea at its church, land rises gently but steadily away from the river with some spots in the southern bounds of Windsor Great Park reaching just above the 60 metre contour. Egham parish was extensive covering just over 6,400 acres and would have supported a growing population that reached over 4,400 by the end of the transcript period, the volume of marriages recorded would indicate an average of half that value for the period covered. Even by Domesday times Egham was large enough, with 57 households, to be amongst the largest 20% of settlements by population recorded in that book, held by Chertsey Abbey its assets of 12 ploughs backed by extensive meadows, pastures and woodland would indicate a smaller manor than that categorisation would imply.

The Church

St John's church stands on the eastern side of Church Road in a very urban environment with commercial premises along the High Street directly opposite. As can readily be seen this is not some medieval masterpiece rather it is a Georgian replacement for the original church and was completed only in 1820 in time for the final marriages in this transcript. From the earlier church only the former porch, transformed into a lychgate, remains from a church that was built in the 12th century. Today's St John was certainly controversial when erected with one commentator, Nairn, describing it as "a very ugly building", it is one that divides opinion. The basic plain is of a box, termed "squat" by Pevsner, augmented with a short chancel and with a pilastered nave, a pyramidal cap and what Pevsner terms as a "tempietto" (defined as a a small temple-like or pavilion-like structure) after Italian examples. Given its urban situation this is a church to visit on foot after finding a town car park, the churchyard has major obstacles for the photographer, the northern aspects together with those from the southwest are removed by thick tree cover whilst those from the southeast are removed by the adjacent Nursery buildings, in short only a few angles remain for the photographer and most of those are poor.