England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Coughton St Peter

The Parish

The parish of Coughton lies in the extreme west of Warwickshire forming s atretch of the county's border with neighbouring Worcestershire. Coughton is located roughly 2 miles north of the market town of Alcester and sits on the A435 road which links Alcester with Birmingham. Whilst Coughton has a presence on the A435 as a crossroads village with many properties clustered around that junction, the parish is dominated by the estate of Coughton Court the home of the Throckmorton family for many centuries. Most of the land between the A435 and the course of the River Arrow is parkland holding Coughton Court and both the parish church & Catholic church. The Throckmortons were Catholic even after the reformation and suffered the consequences of becoming involved in a plot against Queen Elizabeth I. In addition to the main village there is a secondary settlement to the northwest at Sambourne where an equally large crossroads village sits around a double crossroads  Coughton was a farming parish with mixed pastoral and arable methods, the Arrow's flood plain providing good grazing whilst the drier part towards the county border were largely arable. In addition a substantial tract of woodland, Coughton Park, would have been managed by coppicing for woodland products. Modern developments came and went from Coughton, a branch railway line linking Alcester with Redditch has closed and been largely erased from the landscape. The A435 follows the more ancient highway, the Roman Ryknild Street which accounts for its rather straight course through the village. Coughton is drained southwards by the Arrow which meets the Avon to the southwest of Bidford in due course the Avon meets the Severn at Tewkesbury and heads south to the Bristol Channel. Coughton is sited at around 50 metres above the sea, land rises away from the Arrow's valley westwards to reach 137 metres at nearby New End. Coughton parish was extensive covering almost 4,100 and supporting a population of close to 950 parishioners. In Domesday times Coughton was a much smaller place held by one Thorkil of Warwick offering just 3 ploughs, meadows, pastures & woodland but did possess a mill, Sambourne, held by Evesham Abbey, was slightly larger in those times with 4 ploughs and extensive woodland.

The Church

St Peter's church sits within the estate of Coughton Court accessed from the lane which heads east from the A435 to the bridge across the Arrow. Whilst the undoubtedly had been an earlier church on this site today's church is a product of the great church building era of the 15th century and entirely in the Perpendicular style. It is believed that the church was rebuilt on the same site as its predecessor and almost entirely in a single campaign beginning in the 15th century and extending into the early 16th when Sir Robert Throckmorton is recorded bequeathing money for the glazing of the east windows, he died in 1518. Following its completion there has been little change to the structure, a porch was added to the southern doorway in c1780 & a Georgian restoration of 1830 re-seated and re-roofed the church, Pevsner comments that there has only been minor restorations and alterations since that date. The access track to the church leaves Coughton Fields Lane about 200 yards east of the village, it is sometimes gated in which case there is safe parking but a longer walk, after passing the Catholic Church of St Peter, St Paul & St Elizabeth you come to the parish church set just south of Coughton Court, The churchyard has trees impacting from the west & north but the favoured aspects from the south are available for the photographer.