England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Cowesby St Michael

The Parish

The parish of Cowesby lies in the central part of the North Riding of Yorkshire. Cowesby is located about 6 miles southeast of the market town of Northallerton and sits on the western fringe of the North Yorkshire Moors. Cowesby sits in lanes about 2 miles east of the busy A19 road which links Thirsk with Teeside. There is not much to Cowesby merely a scatter of farms and cottages most sited along an east-west running lane or at the immediate foot of the Moorland escarpment. The area would have had been agricultural at the time of this transcript with a mixed farming regime in place, today arable tends to dominate as heavy machinery was developed. A number of small streams drain the parish westwards into the Cod Beck, this leads via the Swale to the North Sea through the Humber Estuary. Cowesby is sited at around 130 metres above the sea but land rises steeply to its east onto the North Yorkshire Moors reaching local heights at 374 metres on Little Moor about 2 miles east. North Yorkshire parishes are rather large in area but Cowesby was quite small, more reminiscent of a southern parish, it covered just over 1,150 acres and would have supported a population of around 100 parishioners. In Domesday times Cowesby was shared between one Hugh (son of Baldric) and the King, himself, it could offer just 4 ploughs as well as small meadows and woodland.

The Church

St Michael's church sits on the northern side of Cowesby's main east/west running lane. Regrettably the mediaeval church on the site was demolished and a new church built in 1846. The building is in a neo-Norman style with a central tower topped by a pyramidal roof. The building clearly lacks great architectural interest as Pevsner dismisses it a couple of lines serving only to document its architect. The church is set rather back from the road, a metal gateway (opposite 2 modern cottages) marked with a footpath sign leads by a dark, tree-lined pathway to the churchyard. There are rather too many mature trees within the churchyard for photographic comfort making for a difficult building to adequately capture.