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

The Parish

The parish of Rawmarsh lies in southern Yorkshire not too far from its joint border with both Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire. Rawmarsh is located just over 2 miles north of the industrial town of Rotherham and stands on the A633 road which links Rotherham with Barnsley. Rawmarsh is a much altered place, old maps show a compact centre grouped around the church and to its east with distinctly separate settlements at Ryecroft to the north and at Parkgate; both of these settlements are nowadays contiguous into a large area of properties whilst Upper Haugh to the northwest is also conjoined and only the green space of the River Don and its adjacent canal separate Rawmarsh from its larger neighbour to the south Rotherham. Prior to the industrial revolution Rawmarsh parish would have been a mixed farming district with almost equal percentages of arable and pastoral methods. The area abounds with both coal and with a fine clay, the two combine to make Rawmarsh a centre earthenware production as well as providing the fuel for its iron & steel industries at both Park Gate and to the northeast Kilnhurst. All these industries combined to swell the population from a typical rural figure into multiple thousands of folk. Modern developments came to the parish too, the railway linking Sheffield with the main London to Scotland east coast line passes through without granting Rawmarsh a station. Rawmarsh is drained northeastwards by the River Don which eventually joins with all of the other rivers joining to meet the North Sea through the Humber Estuary. Rawmarsh sits on a ridge of higher ground, the church stands at around 80 metres whilst the ridge continues rising northwestwards to a local high point of 108 metres in Upper Haugh. Rawmarsh parish was fairly normally sized given its area, covering a little over 2,400 acres it population would have risen from around 400 before industry to over 2.000 by the end of the transcript period. In Domesday times Rawmarsh was a tiny place, a holding of Walter d'Aincourt its assets of just 3 ploughs, typical meadows & woodlands were at least supplemented by having a mill.

The Church

St Mary's church sits on the western side of the A633, here called Church Street, as it climbs north from crossing the Don & canal. Whilst there has been a church here since the 12th century, at the very least, today's church is largely the product of the Victorians. At least they incorporated part of the original church, the remain of its doorway reveal Norman Romanesque work that may even be as early as the late 11th century. The remainder of the church dates largely from a rebuild of 1839, thus not the venue for these marriages, plus further work from later in the 19th century. The aisled nave was completed in 1839, the tower largely rebuilt from the medieval in 1870 and the chancel, complete with an apsidal end in 1898 so essentially this is a modern church. Parking in the immediate vicinity is impossible the A633 being flagged for no parking, a church to find a parking space and approach on foot. Sloping ramps of footpath head from the street up into the churchyard and whilst the church is largely constrained from the north it is, thankfully, fairly open to the south for satisfactory landscape views.