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

The Parish

The parish of Oddingley lies in central Worcestershire about 3 miles south of the town of Droitwich. Oddingley lies in an area formerly largely devoid of numbered roads, prior to the construction of the modern M5 motorway the closest numbered road was the A4538 , spur off the A38 heading from Droitwich towards th eastern edges of Worcester. Oddingley is a tiny place, little more than a hamlet with no clear defined village just a scatter of farms and cottages. The area was intensely agricultural with a mixed farming regime of both arable and pastoral farming. As already mentioned Oddingley has received a wealth of modern developments, initially the Birmingham & Worcester Canal, followed by the railway between the same two cities and finally that modern M5 motorway, all three pass through or alongside the parish. Whilst the construction of the canal disrupted slightly the local drainage most is heading south to join the Bow Brook, the latter meets, in turn, the Avon at Defford and thence to the Severn and the Bristol Channel. Oddingley is sited at around 60 metres above the sea in fairly gentle terrain where local heights (Newland Common) barely reach a further 20 metres higher. This area of the county is a network of tiny parishes and Oddingley was one of those, covering just over 800 acres it would have supported a population of close to 200 parishioners. In Domesday times Oddingley was equally small, held by the Bishop of Worcester it could muster just 2 ploughs, the usual meadows, pasture & woodland but did possess, rather incongruously, a salthouse.

The Church

St James' church sits cheek-by-jowl with the canal and railway line some half mile east of the main crossroads which is the notional centre of Oddingley. Whilst a prior church must have existed here the present building shows only the 14th century as its earliest structure, the transept window tracery, albeit reset, shows the style of that era. Most of the remainder has its origins from the subsequent 15th century and is Perpendicular in style. The final addition is the western tower which was added in the 17th century. That these dating features can be found is heartening considering the restoration, almost a rebuild, which occurred in Victorian times. In the 1860s, at the expense of the Galton family, the church was almost completely rebuilt but with sensitivity much was also reused to maintain that integrity. Church Lane leads generally eastwards in a meandering course heading for Crowle, just before reaching a major bend a track heads south adjacent to a prominent farm, at the end sits the church within a churchyard that has few obstructions to photography.

Worcestershire Archive & Archaeology Service - Reference - 850ODDINGLEY/4038/1/iii1756 - 1812