England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Pewsey St John the Baptist

The Parish

The parish of Pewsey lies in east central Wiltshire about 6 miles south of the market town of Marlborough and 9 east of Devizes. Pewsey is a small market town sitting on the A345 road which connects Marlborough with Amesbury. Pewsey was a fairly small town with a livestock & corn market serving its vale, the town lies in a shallow vale between two areas of chalk downland. The surrounding economy would have been highly dependent upon the sheep grazing the poor chalky soils of the Wiltshire Downs, their fleeces making the town relatively wealthy, today those soils are largely turned to cereals, beet and oil seed as modern fertilisers and machinery enable them to be worked. With the coming of, firstly, the Kennet & Avon Canal, which took advantage of the vale's west to east route, and, later, Brunel's Great Western rail line from London to the South West, its importance grew. Today Pewsey remains a small town, but with rail commuting to the capital under 2 hours modern developments have spread it out over a square roughly a mile in diameter. Pewsey has also developed a tourism trade being close to the trail-head for the Ridgeway Path and with excellent downland hiking nearby over the characteristic prehistoric landscape of Wiltshire it forms a centre for stay-cations. The parish is drained westwards and then south by the infant Wiltshire Avon which finds a breach in the chalk to pass through Salisbury on its way to the English Channel at Christchurch Harbour. Pewsey is sited at around 110 metres above the sea but land swells both to the south and north to reach local heights of double that height within a few miles. As befits a market town Pewsey parish was one of the larger in the area, it covered just under 5,000 acres and would have supported a population of close to 1,800 parishioners. In Domesday times Pewsey was held by 4 landholders including a small portion by the King, the majority share, however, was held by Winchester Abbey and a wealthy holding at that, 22 ploughs, meadows, pastures and woodland and an impressive 7 mills made it one of the largest 20% of places recorded in the book.

The Church

St John the Baptist's church sits at the heart of Pewsey on the inside of a double bend made by the A345 as it winds through the town. The church has ancient origins, the earliest portion being the arcades which show massive Sarsen stones, obtained from the nearby downs, no doubt, and date from just after the Conquest. Late Norman Romanesque in style they place the church's origins back to the 12th century. From the following century comes the chancel, its lancet windows characteristic of the Early English Gothic style. The church clearly received a major overhaul in the 15th century, the western tower and clerestory being Perpendicular in style and characteristic of the great church-building era of that time, funded by wealthy wool merchants. A southern chapel was added in the 19th century and the usual restorations and replacement took place, many of the windows being updated. The church sits in an highly elevated site with tall and rather formidable walls facing Church Street where there is space for a car or two. Steps climb upwards into the churchyard, unfortunately the favoured angle for photography (from the southeast) is precluded by the many trees making for a difficult subject to adequately capture from within the churchyard.