England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Great Musgrave St Theobald

The Parish

The parish of Great Musgrave lies in northeastern Westmorland not too far from its border with North Yorkshire. at its northernmost point it is only yards from the Yorkshire parish of Romaldkirk. Great Musgrave is located roughly 3 1/2 miles north of the small market town of Kirkby Stephen and sits on and mostly east of the B6259 road, a linking road that connects Kirkby Stephen with the busy trans-Pennine route of the A66. Great Musgrave is a short strip of properties sitting along a lane leading eastwards from the B6259, the village stands on the northern banks of the River Eden at its confluence with the Swindale Beck. Great Musgrave is an upland settlement its major land-use being the low-intensity farming of mainly hardy hill sheep, such is the nature of the area that early gazetteers describe almost 60% of the parish acreage as being "waste", a term often used to describe un-improved moorland. Despite this upland nature modern developments did come briefly to Great Musgrave, a  branch railway line linking Kirkby Stephen with Appleby passing close by, most of that line is now gone but from Warcop onwards northwestwards it runs as the Eden Valley Heritage line. Great Musgrave is drained northwestwards by the River Eden which eventually makes its way to Carlisle before reaching the Irish Sea through the Solway Firth. Great Musgrave is sited at around 160 metres above the sea but sits within the Eden's valley, to the north land rises onto the Pennine Hills quickly reaching 622 metres on Warcop Fell and 748 metres a little further north on Little Fell, much of this area is in the hands of the military as a training area based at Warcop. Great Musgrave parish is a curious sliver of land stretching for some distance north to south but nowhere of any great east to west depth, it covered almost 4,100 acres within which it would have supported a population of just over 150 parishioners. This far north the Normans had little influence with little or no coverage within Domesday Book, as a consequence Great Musgrave, like so many other settlements in the area, has no mention.

The Church

St Theobald's church sits a quarter of a mile south of the village on the banks of the river, a rather pretty location accessible only on foot across fields. Sadly today's church is not the venue for these marriages, the 12th century Norman Romanesque church was completely rebuilt subsequent to this transcript period in a campaign from 1844-1846. The present building, consisting of a combined nave and chancel augmented by a thin western tower is built in a slightly later style, that of the Early English Gothic which flourished in the 13th century. This style uses thin lancet style windows as a characteristic motif. The church is, however, clearly of little architectural interest for Pevsner whose account is a short 6 lines of mainly descriptive text. The church is approached by one of two ways, down the footpath, Church Lane, directly from the village or alternatively across fields on the rough track from the B6259, marked by a white sign. At the latter site the verge is worn indicating frequent parking, it is the shorter of the two routes. The churchyard is something of a challenge for the photographer with the church placed tight to its tree-lined southern edge, thus removing the favoured aspects from the photographer's portfolio, a difficult church to photograph well especially on a sunny day.