England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Crosby Ravensworth St Lawrence

The Parish

The parish of Crosby Ravensworth lies in central Westnorland about 5 miles southwest of the small market town of Appleby. Whilst the village of Crsoby Ravensworth is a small to middle sized village sitting in the valley of the River Lyvennet, the wider parish has a number of smaller hamlets, farms and cottages scattered over a broad area of upland. Crosby Ravensworth, itself, sits just over a mile west of the B6260 road which connects Appleby with Orton. This is an upland parish which is largely underlain with Carboniferous limestone, a rock which, in places, emerges into the clints & grykes of limestone pavement where scraped bare by past ice ages. The thin soils of the district are good only for sheep grazing in the main, but the land is metalliferous and the limestone was extensively worked both for building stone and to improve the acidic upland pastures. The Lyvennet drains the parish northwards, joining the Eden to reach the Irish Sea through the Solway Firth and the city of Carlisle. Crosby Ravensworth village is sited at around 180 metres above the sea but land rises all around reaching 372 metres on nearby Harderdale Nab. Crosby Ravensworth parish is one of the more extensive in the land, covering just over 8,900 acres it would have supported a population of close to 900 parishioners of whom barely 300 were in the village, itself. Like much of this area of northern England Crosby Ravensworth is not mentioned in Domesday Book, entries northwards of Kendal are rare indeed. 

The Church

St Lawrence's church sits at the heart of Crsoby Ravensworth village by the junction of the Lyvennet and the feeder stream running down from Harderdale Nab, this stream passes alongside the village street, unfenced. The church was largely rebuilt in Georgian times but enough remains to identify the earliest history of the building. The crossing, where the transepts meet the main body of the church, are the oldest part and are dated by Pevsner to the last decade of the 12th century, in the Early English Gothic style of that era. The next earliest portion is the arcades to the nave, Decorated in style and from the 13th century. The first remodel of the church came in the mid 15th century, Pevsner speculates that there had been a cruciform layout until that date with a central crossing tower above that Early English area, this was removed along with most of the transepts and built the current western tower. The Georgian restoration on the 1810s saw much change but much has been erased in later work, southwestern porch and chancel's southern doorway remain. The second period of change covered a long period from 1848 - 1887 in which today's church was largely overlain across the earlier fabric. The church sits on the western side of the main lane running through the village, which is amply wide enough for careful parking. A humped bridge is needed to cross the bordering stream to the wooden gates which grant entry through the surrounding limestone walls. There are trees dotted around the churhcyard which restrict views from certain angles but enough remain to adequately capture the building.