England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Kirkby Fleetham St Mary

The Parish

The parish of Kirkby Fleetham lies in northern Yorkshire, within the North Riding and roughly 6 miles west of the market town of Northallerton. Kirkby Fleetham is a small and relatively compact village which is located about 2 miles east of the A1, Great North Road, connecting London to Scotland and built upon the line of the Roman Dere Street. Kirkby Fleetham sits on the plain of the Vale of York just a bit away from the flood-plain of the nearby River Swale with most properties sitting along a winding lane which crosses that river en route from the A1 to Great Langton. Like most parishes within this area farming was the dominant force within the local economy,here a mixed regime of almost equal arable & pastoral would have held sway; today, with the advent of modern machinery the trend is much more towards arable. The Swale drains the parish southwards, meeting the Ure to the east of Boroughbridge and passing through York to reach the North Sea through the Humber Estuary. Kirkby Fleetham is sited at 40 metres above the sea in fairly gentle terrain, the A1 follows the nearest higher ground but barely reaches 20 metres higher. This ares of Yorkshire consists of a mixture of large parishes interspersed with smaller and more compact one, Kirkby Fleetham parish was one of the latter, covering just under 3,000 acres it would have supported a population of close to 650 parishioners. In Domesday times this was largely an area close to the northern border of the Norman's sphere of influence. Kirkby Fleetham is mentioned as a holding of Count Alan of Brittany and was a small place offering just 3 ploughs and 6 households making it one of the smallest settlements listed in that tome.

The Church

St Mary's church sits just over a mile north of the village in the grounds of Kirkby Fleetham Hall, accessed by Kirkby Lane and the entrance driveway to the grounds. Like many churches St Mary shows signs of work from the earliest times through to the modern. Pevsner locates the southern doorway as the earliest surviving element, dating it to the 12th century in a Norman Romanesque style. From the following century and Early English Gothic is the two bay southern chapel. The northern aisle shows the next style change being Decorated and early 14th century and finally the western tower is Perpendicular and either late 14th or early 15th in age. The final piece is a consequence of the usual Victorian tendency to restore and modify, they not only made a thorough restoration but added the northern arcade in their work of 1871. Where Kirkby Lane kinks sharply at right angles to continue in a southwestwards line, a white sign points down the tarred driveway to the church. Folk can either park here and walk the short distance or find parking outside the churchyard which is open, uncluttered and with no obstacles to photography