England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Dewsbury All Saints

The Parish

The parish of Dewsbury lies in southwestern Yorkshire about 9 miles southwest of the city of Leeds. Dewsbury is a market town and manufacturing centre which sits within the Calder Valley and upon the A638 which follows that valley westwards from Wakefield towards Halifax. Whilst Dewsbury functioned as the market centre for its nearby region, operating a weekly market for goods and livestock, it also grew spectacularly as a mill-town, the Calder's waters powering the looms before the industrial revolution powered growth through steam produced by burning local coal. The surrounding area is part of the fore-hills to the nearby Pennine range and sheep grazing its moorland produced the wool that made Dewsbury a production centre mainly for heavy woollens such as "mungo" and "shoddy" suitable for blankets and carpets. During the period of this transcript Dewsbury grew from a small market town into a major industrial town and the arrival of canals and railways during the 19th century fueled explosive growth. Such is the growth of Dewsbury and its neighbouring towns of Ossett, Batley & Liversedge that the area is almost nowadays a single conurbation with contiguous settlement from the M1 to the east almost through to the M62 to the west. Dewsbury is drained by the Calder which flows eastwards joining with the Aire near Castleford and then the Yorkshire Ouse to flow through the Humber Estuary into the North Sea. Dewsbury is sited at around 40 metres above the sea in the valley by the  church but rises to above 150 metres in its northern suburbs. Dewsbury parish was once covering almost the whole of southwestern Yorkshire before being subdivided into smaller parishes, its former 400 square miles making it once the most extensive in England, even reduced to just under 10,000 acres it was still covering a formidable area, within that extensive acreage a population grew steadily from fewer than 4,000 folk to well over 10,000 by the completion of this transcript. In Domesday times much of the Pennine area was relatively underdeveloped and Dewsbury, held by King William, could only offer 6 ploughs as assets.

The Church

All Saints church, also known as Dewsbury Minster, sits at the junction of the A638 & B6117 roads. The church has been a centre for worship since Saxon times but nothing remains from that early period, indeed externally today's church appears to all be of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries but that masks earlier work which Pevsner prises out through forensic examination of the interior. Within the rebuilding, mainly of the mid-1760s, lies a four-bay nave with late 12th or early 13th century arcades showing piers characteristic of the Early English Gothic period. A section of wall above the eastern-most arches is thought to be but is unproven to be 10th century. The remainder of the church is, indeed , of the later periods, the rebuild of 1765-1767 being extensively altered during restorations of 1823, 1884 - 1888 & 1895 in which the Decorated style was imposed. Later work in 1994 saw former chancel into upper & lower halls, converted the southern transept into a display centre and the northern chapel of the chancel into a refectory leaving a thoroughly modern church with its hidden medieval secrets. Sitting alongside a busy dual-carriageway and road junction with limited immediate parking this is a church to visit after seeking parking in one of the town's car parks. Whilst the church sits in extensive grounds these are to put it mildly, extensively forested, removing wholly the southeast aspects from the photographer's arsenal, indeed the best views are from outside the churchyard dodging the surrounding traffic.