England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Norton Bavant All Saints

The Parish

The parish of Norton Bavant lies in western Wiltshire roughly 4 miles southeast of the market town of Warminster. Norton Bavant sits between the former route of the A36, now renumbered as the B3414, and its new route which is part of the Warminster bypass and connects Bath through to Salisbury. Norton Bavant is roughly equally distant from both and sits on the northern banks of the River Wylye, it being merely a small riverside village. That riverside location gave Norton Bavant a more varied farming regime than is typical of the area, the Wylye valley butts abruptly against the high chalk downland further east and would have provided the parish with sheep grazing, the valley with lusher pastures for cattle and some cereals would have been grown on intermediate land. Modern developments have come to Norton Bavant, the Bath to Salisbury railway line carves its way down the convenient corridor of the Wylye valley alongside the A36 for much of its course but doesn't grant Norton Bavant a station. The River Wylye drains the parish southeastwards joining the Nadder shortly before the Avon at Salisbury, turning south water reaches the English Channel through Christchurch Harbour. Norton Bavant is sited at around 100 metres above the sea but out of its valley setting land climbs steeply to nearby Scratchbury & Cotley Hills topping out at 198 & 193 metres respectively. Chalkland parishes are often fairly large by southern standards and Norton Bavant at 2,200 acres was larger than purely arable parishes, within that acreage there would have been supported a population of close to 300 parishioners. In Domesday times Norton Bavant was a holding of one Alfred of Marlborough, a relatively modest asset base of 6 ploughs together with the usual meadows, pastures and woodlands was augmented by 2 mills from the nearby River Wylye.

The Church

All Saints' church sits almost on the banks of the River Wylye accessed by a narrow dead-end lane sunning southwest from the B3414. Sadly this church is one which would largely be unrecognisable to the participants in this transcript, the single exception being its western tower, as the main body of the church was completely rebuilt in the immediate 3 years after this transcript finishes, 1838 - 1840. The western tower, a slightly idiosyncratic piece with its higher square stair-turret is in the medieval Perpendicular style that was fashionable in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. The only other remaining medieval piece that Pevsner could locate was the arch to the southern transept which is earlier still and possibly 13th century. The rebuild of the main body already mentioned was further augmented by work in 1869 which saw the removal of the northern transept and in 1896 by the rebuilding of that southern transepts (the Benett Chapel). The churchyard is slightly impeded for the photographer by two major tree clusters, one to the northeast being easily avoided whilst that to the southwest hugs the western tower tightly and markedly restricts the angles available to the photographer.