England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Churchover Holy Trinity

The Parish

The parish of Churchover lies in northeastern Warwickshire forming a stretch of the county's border with neighbouring Leicestershire, meanwhile Northamptonshire also lies not too far away. Churchover is located roughly 4 miles north of the industrial town of Rugby and sits just over a mile southwest of the A5 road (London to Holyhead) which follows the ancient Romans route of Watling Street and also provides the straight-line of the county's border, a very ancient boundary line. Churchover is a fairly isolated small compact village with just a pair of lanes running into it and meeting in the cluster of properties that huddle around the resulting junction. Churchover sits on the eastern banks of the River Swift, a fact that provided the parish with some variation in its farming, drier areas were typically arable whilst wetter ones saw pastures in almost equal measure if estimates in early gazetteers are accurate. Modern developments hover around Churchover, the railway line leading northwards from Rugby to Leicester has closed and been largely dismantled, it ran west of the village whilst the modern M6 motorway and its ultra-busy junction 1 lie just to the south. Churchover is drained southwards by the Swift which soon reaches the Avon and turns westwards eventually reaching the Severn at Tewkesbury and the Bristol Channel as its terminus. Churchover is sited at around 110 metres above the sea in rolling countryside where local high spots reach 139 metres to the west towards Pailton. At around 1,500 acres Churchover parish was fairly typically sized for a southern farming parish, within that acreage it would have supported a population of around 350 parishioners. In Domesday times Churchover was equally small and rural,, shared by 4 landholders but with the substantial majority in the hands of Robert of Stafford it could muster 10 ploughs, the usual meadows and woodland and also held a mill.

The Church

Holy Trinity church sits about 200 yards north of the main junction on the western side of Church Street which peters out into a footpath a little beyond the church and a few more houses. This is a church which received a major restoration in Victorian times, a restoration that amounted almost to a complete rebuild. Despite its origins in typically medieval times very little remains from that early church. An indication of what has been erased is indicated by the southern doorway which, peculiarly was left untouched and which dates from the 13th century in an Early English Gothic style. Inside it is also revealed that the southern arcade of c1300 and from the short Transitional style also remained despite the attentions of the Victorians. The major piece of the medieval that remains is the western tower, its Perpendicular style flourished in the late 14th & 15th centuries and whilst the spire is undoubtedly 15th century it base is probably slightly earlier. Here work from intervening centuries can be discerned as the parapet dates from Tudor times. The tower's spire received some attention prior to the major work of the Victorian period having to be rebuilt in 1885 before the 1897 rebuild of the remainder occurred. Most of the remaining fabric dates from that late-Victorian era. Church Street is adequately wide enough for comfortable street parking outside the churchyard which is bordered by a low local stone wall, a small gate at the southern end forms an entrance. Once within there are no obstacles for the photographer.