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

The Parish

The parish of Crowle lies in southern central Worcestershire roughly 5 miles east of the city of Worcester. Crowle sits just over a mile north of the A422 road which links Worcester with Alcester in Warwickshire. Crowle is a small crossroads village built around a staggered junction of lanes, most properties sat around the double junction until recent times when the village expanded as a small commuter settlement, a subsidiary village, Crowle Green, sits at a further crossroads a little to the north. Like most rural parishes in the eastern half of the county Crowle was a farming parish with arable dominant, early gazetteers estimate roughly 2:1 in favour of arable over pastoral methods. In addition to farming there was a small local business in the manufacture of gloves which employed some in the village. Modern developments have some to the parish, the railway line from Birmingham to Gloucester, that which bypasses Worcester, passes through the parish without granting Crowle a station. Crowle is drained southwards by the Bow Brook which eventually meets the Avon to the southwest of Pershore, the Avon trends westwards to meet the Severn at Tewkesbury before the latter heads determinedly south to eventually reach the sea through the Bristol Channel. Crowle is sited at around 60 metres above the sea in gently rolling countryside where that height represents some of the higher ground around, a couple of spots to the immediate west of the village reach 75 metres. Crowle parish was typically sized for the area covering just under 1,700 acres it would have supported a population of close to 500 parishioners.. In Domesday times Crowle was a more significant settlement with two landholders, the Bishop of Worcester & one Richard's son Osbern, their collective assets were 8 ploughs, meadows & woodland plus there were 3 valuable salthouses and a mill making for a wealthy rural farming manor.

The Church

St John's church sits at the southern end of the village on the northern side of Bredicot Lane. Sadly very little of the medieval remains in this church which has been subject to two substantial Victorian rebuilding phases. A major rebuild of 1881 swiftly followed by a further rebuild of the western tower in 1885 has left the church as a largely Victorian church and one scarcely recognisable to the participants in these marriages. Some medieval elements remain, the timber northern porch is genuinely 14th century, an image niche and the tower arch remain from the original Perpendicular western tower and several Decorated style early 14th century windows were reused, all enough to determine that the medieval church had  been largely of the 14th and 15th centuries. Bredicot Lane is of sufficient width to allow on-street parking outside the churchyard gates, there are odd trees spotted around and more of the same to the north of the church but the favoured southern aspects are readily available for the photographer.