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

The Parish

The parish of Drayton Beauchamp lies in southeastern Buckinghamshire forming an extensive stretch of the county's border with neighbouring Hertfordshire. Drayton Beauchamp is located roughly 2 miles west of the Hertfordshire market town of tring and sits immediately east of the improved A41 road which connects Aylesbury with London. Drayton Beauchamp is a small estate village straggling along a lane which runs from northwest to southeast and crosses the Wendover Branch of the Grand Union Canal, it sits below the Chiltern ridge which lies beyond Tring to the southeast. Here the soil is a thick and quite sticky clay so the estate, marked only by the moat and fishponds of the former manor, specialised in pastoral farming in a semi-park-like environment. The twin modern developments of canal and modern high-speed highway come from differing centuries but both impact the parish. Drayton Beauchamp is drained northwards by a series of small brooks which join to form the infant River Thame before heading westwards and then south to meet the Thames at Dorchester on Thames, here water turns back east to flow through the capital to the North Sea. Drayton Beauchamp is sited between 110 and 150 metres above the sea, its lane rising southwards, the Chiltern escarpment dominates views to the south rising to 261 metres above Wendover Woods and followed by the Ridgway National Trail, a popular local and national hike. Drayton Beauchamp parish is curiously extended as thin strip of land bordering Hertfordshire yet only yards broad, the purpose being to enclose the differing land-types available, it covered a little over 1,300 acres and supported a population of close to 250 parishioners. In Domesday times Drayton Beauchamp was shared between a Breton Mainou and Count Robert of Mortain and was an equally small rural manor offering 9 ploughs backed by typical meadows and woodland.

The Church

St Mary's church sits a little away from its small village accessed across a semi-park-like landscape by the dead end Church Lane. The church is an attractive and picturesque one both for its appearance, a mosaic of flint and square light-coloured stone, and for its setting. It is also one which is much altered from its original medieval construction. The earliest fabric that remains today is found in the tower arch of the Early English Gothic period from the 13th century. Later alterations have reused material which is discernible as being from 13th and 14th century origins but is clearly not in its original locations in many cases. Both the roofs and many windows date from the 15th century and the windows are Perpendicular in style and probably original. Two phases of Victorian work are documented in Pevsner, the first in 1866 was a thorough restoration and responsible for many of the lost medieval features whilst the second in 1870 restored the western tower. Church Lane ends at a gate, parking on the grassy verges sits just short of that gate, access is then on foot the 100 metres or so to the churchyard. The photographer will be disappointed to find the church tight to the southern edges removing those favoured aspects but all other angles are readily available.