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

The Parish

The parish of Asby, also nowadays known as Great Asby, lies in central Westmorland about 5 miles south of the market town of Appleby. Great Asby is a small and rather linear village, built along the valley of the Hoff Beck and sitting within an extensive area devoid of any numbered major roads. The closest significant roads arethe Trans-Pennine A66 which lies just around 4 miles to Great Asby's northeast and the B6260 (Appleby to Orton) road which lies 3 miles west. Great Asby parish also contained a number of smaller townships of which Little Asby is the only settlement larger than a hamlet, today. An upland area, underlain by highly porous limestone, the parish would have had a pastoral farming economy dominated by raising of sheep on the thin soils sitting above the limestone. Today Great Asby has some tourism as there are many paths crisscrossing the upland to its south where the limestone surface is divided into classic "clints & grykes". Caving in the many underground systems is also a major local activity. The Hoff Beck drains the parish northwards, joining the Eden at Appleby and reaching the Irish Sea through Carlisle & the Solway Estuary. Great Asby is sited at around 180 metres above the sea in an extensive upland area on the western side of the Pennines, land rises to local heights of almost 400 metres on nearby Beacon Hill. As befits a northern upland parish Asby parish was extensive, covering close to 6,500 acres it would have supported a population of almost 450 parishioners. Like much of the north of England Asby parish is not mentioned in Domesday Book, the coverage this far north is sparse.

The Church

St Peter's church sits at the heart of Great Asby on the southern side of the main lane running through the village and close to the banks of the Hoff Beck. Sadly St Peter is not some medieval masterpiece but a Victorian replacement built in the 1860s replacing whatever church stood here before. The local benefactors, the Hill family, paid for the work which Pevsner describes as "unabashedly Victorian". A western bellcote is its only significant feature which required substantial buttressing to take its weight. St Peter sits on a broad junction of lanes with a substantial area for parking around the entry, a lychgate grants entry through a low local stone wall into a churchyard devoid of any obstacles to photography.