England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Tatsfield St Mary

The Parish

The parish of Tatsfield lies in the extreme southeast of Surrey forming an extensive stretch of the county's border with neighbouring Kent. Tatsfield is located roughly 8 miles west of the Kent market town of Sevenoaks and sits a mile west of the A233 road which connects Westerham through to Orpington. Tatsfield has a strange origin, prior to the 19th century it was merely a small rural farming village, grazing of sheep on the open chalk of the North Downs upon which it sits, speculative development, based upon a railway which never arrived created a colony of tiny houses embedded within foliage to become almost a garden village. The settlement was advertised by the tag-line "Come to London's Alps". The result is a settlement well to the north of the village green and even further north of the parish church. Sitting on porous chalk there is no surface drainage whatsoever and it is not until Orpington that a watercourse, the River Cray, emerges from sub-surface drainage, the Cray meets the Darenth and almots immediately later the outer Thames estuary before reaching the North Sea. Tatsfield settlement occupies the wooded slopes of a dry valley rising from 160 metres to over 220 metres above the sea with land rising southwards to the crest of the North Downs escarpment with spot heights of 267 metres at Botley Hill before plunging into The Weald. Tatsfield parish was rather small at just under 1,300 acres and whilst merely an estate village of the Gresham Estate held a population of around 150 parishioners. In Domesday time Tatsfield was even smaller, held by the ubiquitous Bishop Odo it could offer just a pair of ploughs as assets.

The Church

St Mary's church has a stupendous location sitting almost on the edge of the North Downs escarpment at 240 metres above sea level, it sits well over a half mile south of the southernmost reaches of the Victorian development. Not only is the site spectacular but the church, itself, has fabric from the earliest period of stone-built churches. The nave walls, in a dark sandstone, are all 12th century and Norman Romanesque in style, Pevsner was particularly impressed with the nave's northern face complete with characteristic tiny windows. The chancel is from the later Early English Gothic period of the 13th century, Pevsner granting a date of c1230, and shows lancet styled windows of that style on both faces. During the brief Transitional era of c1300 the chancel was extended eastwards and a new east window inserted from that era. A few windows were replaced in both nave and chancel during the Perpendicular era but the next major change can in 1838 with the construction of the western tower, curiously built within the nave rather than external to it. Further restoration work in 1882 completed the church as we see it today. Opposite the churchyard stands a golf course whose parking is often full but to the north is a rough parking area allowing a car or two to get off road in the narrow Church Hill. A shaded pathway leads through dense trees to a very compact churchyard which has adequate views for those with appropriate wide-angled lenses as getting back is impeded by further trees.