England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Huddington St James

The Parish

The parish of Huddington lies almost centrally within the county of Worcestershire. Huddington is located roughly 5 miles southeast of the spa-town of Droitwich. Huddington sits in an area devoid of significant numbered roads, the closest such road being the A422 road which sits almost 3 miles to its south and which links Worcester with Alcester in Warwickshire. There is not much to modern day Huddington and it would seem to have always been the case. With all land owned by the Earl of Shrewsbury, who operated complete control over inbound migration, it functioned as a "closed parish" and consequently no defined village developed. The parish is dominated by the estate of Huddington Court, home to the Wintour family, between the 15th century and 1658, it is a T-plan manor house of the late 15th century. Its claim to fame, or perhaps notoriety, is that 3 brothers Wintour were executed as plotters of the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes fame. The hamlet consists of the house, a few surrounding cottages plus a scatter of other farmsteads. Like much of this area Huddington would have been dominated by pastoral farming with some arable present. Huddington is drained southwards by the Bow Brook which eventually meets, in turn, the Avon close to Defford and then the Severn before heading to the sea through the Bristol Channel. Huddington is sited at around 35 metres above the sea in rather gentle terrain where local high points rise to the west to 88 metres on nearby Climers Hill. Huddington was a small parish, one of the smallest in its county, and a thin strip of lane angled northwest to southeast, it covered less than 950 acres and would have supported a population of only a few more than 100 parishioners. In Domesday times Huddington was a holding of the Bishop of Worcester, equally small as today and offering just 4 ploughs albeit there was a mill.

The Church

St James' sits cheek-by-jowl with Huddington Court about 150 metres south of the main lane through the hamlet. Like many small churches supporting small congregations it has remaining features from very early times. The earliest portion of the church is the nave which dates from the 12th century and is Norman Romanesque in style, as are its plain southern doorway and northwestern window. Much else dates from the 14th century and is a mixture of the two styles prevalent in that century, the Decorated style of the first half of the century is shown by a few scattered windows while the Perpendicular is shown more extensively. The early Perpendicular of the 14th century is present in the southern aisle, which was later subjected to change in the 17th century, and in the timber northern porch whilst the late Perpendicular of 15th or possibly 16th centuries is carried by the chancel. Besides the limited 17th century work on the southern aisle the main restoration came late in the Victorian period. In 1900 a thorough restoration, described in faint praise as "well restored" by Pevsner, partially rebuilt the southern aisle, replaced a few windows and generally tidied up the building allowing it to survive in good order into the 21st century. The church can be found down an un-marked track which leads to noth church and hall from SO943573 (grid reference), parking must be careful to avoid blocking this access track. The churchyard is rather compact and surrounded rather tightly by a thick band of trees which mean some head-scratching by the photographer to find enough angles to adequately capture this small rural church.