England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Cantley St Wilfrid

The Parish

The parish of Cantley lies in the extreme south of Yorkshire forming a stretch of the county's border with neighbouring Nottinghamshire and almost touching, at its easternmost tip, Lincolnshire. Cantley is located roughly 3 miles east of the town of Doncaster and sits about a mile north of the A638 road which links Doncaster with East Retford in Norringhamshire. Cantley is a much changed place, early maps show a small village where properties cluster around the hall with a short southwestern extension to the church, today it is merely a suburb of Doncaster which has expanded to engulf the former discrete village. In addition to Cantley village the parish also contained the hamlets of Branton, Bessecarr, High and Low Ellers, Gatewood, and Kilholme. At the time of this transcript Cantley was a farming community with the old maps showing fields all about and a mixture of arable, on drier ground, and pastoral methods in place. Modern developments abound, first to arrive was the railway line from Doncaster to Gainsborough which slices through the south of the parish, more modern is the M18 motorway which lies only a quarter mile east of Cantley Hall and its 18th century house and parkland estate. Cantley is drained northeastwards by the River Torne which quickly becomes man-influenced as it passes into the fenland east of Doncaster, the Torne is joined by one of the major drainage channels, the South Engine Drain, to take it to the Trent and thus out to sea through the Humber Estuary. Cantley is sited at around 10 metres above the sea on slightly higher ground than further east, a spot height of 25 metres to its southwest is the highest ground for some distance. Cantley parish was large covering just over 5,100 acres and supporting a population of close to 650 parishioners. Domesday Cantley was recovering from the "harrowing of the north" with much described as "waste", held by Geoffrey Alselin it had recovered enough to record 8 ploughs and a league of woodland.

The Church

St Wilfrid's church once stood surrounded by fields just over a half mile southwest of the hall and village of Cantley, today it is surrounded by modern housing and stands on the western side of Church Lane, not a rural lane but a suburban thoroughfare. Rendered in a plain cemented pebble-dash there seems to be nothing remarkable about St Wilfrid, it is, however, a church with a long history ans styles from the earliest to the most modern. The church has a 12th century Norman priest's door and the eastern window is of three stepped lancets from the 13th century Early English Gothic period. Later still is the 3-bay southern arcade which represents the early 14th century Decorated style and completing the set of medieval styles is the Perpendicular western tower of the late 14th or early 15th century. In 1884 William Eardley, the vicar at that time, restored the church to an architectural design of his own making, this work quickly followed by a further campaign of 1892-4 which enlarged the church and restored again, a fire in the chancel in 1905 created a further need for restoration. The final act in this tortuous history was in 1989 when the northern aisle was demolished for the creation of a "second nave" as a controversial extension. Church Lane is well used for parking outside the lychgate that grants entry to the churchyard which has trees to the east of the church but otherwise has no major obstacles for the photographer.