England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Woolaston St Andrew

The Parish

The parish of Woolaston, often rendered Wollaston in early gazetteers, lies in southwestern Gloucestershire, west of the Severn and, thanks to a thin strip of its parish squeezed between Tidenham & Hewelsfield parishes, a very short stretch of the border with Monmouthshire and hence Wales along a meander of the Wye. Woolaston can be found roughly 5 miles northeast of the Monmouthshire town of Chepstow and sits on and mostly north of the A48 road linking Chepstow with Gloucester. The historic centre of Woolaston is that grouped around its church, early maps show the modern area carrying the village name to have once been named Netherend and that is the main settlement today, a short presence on the A40 with a lengthy extension northwest, ancient Woolaston sits roughly a mile south. Woolaston has a lengthy foreshore with the Severn estuary which would have supplied both fish and shellfish, coastal plains dotted with cattle on rich pastures whilst inland the extensive common saw grazing of sheep mainly in common, a few patches of arable varied the farming. Modern developments have come to the parish, the railway line between Gloucester & Chepstow also hugging the Severn's foreshore but not granting Woolaston a station. Twin brooks, the Cone Brook and Black Brook, drain the parish into the nearby estuary. Woolaston is sited at around 30 metres above the sea whilst Netherend rises to 60 metres in places, inland land rises onto the fore-hills of the nearby Forest of Dean to over 200 metres en route to Hewelsfield. Woolaston parish was extensive covering over 3,100 acres which would have supported a population of around 1,000 parishioners. Within Woolaston parish it and the manor at Plusterwine merited entries, both were holdings of William D'Eu and were small, collectively the two manors carried 8 ploughs, more profitable were the mill and 2 fisheries.

The Church

St Andrew's church sits in the original settlement of Woolaston some mile south of Netherend and west of the A48 accessed along Church Lane, a dead-end lane. Although a church was first recorded in documentary sources here as early as 1131, the site is also circular resembling the Welsh early Christian sites, the "llans", very little of that date survives in today's church thanks to rebuilding in the late 1850s which almost obliterated all medieval traces. The southern doorway was 12th century Norman Romanesque but has been rebuilt, a fraction of the nave's walls remain as c1300, thus from the brief Transitional period between Early English Gothic & Decorated styles. The northern tower was also medieval but again has been rebuilt, initially in 1774 and then remodelled and heightened in 1859. Besides these medieval fragments all else dates from that 1859 rebuild and thus would be unrecognisable for these participants. Church Lane leaves the A48 immediately north of a rest area and forks away from Keynsham Lane to finally describe the southern edge of the churchyard before ending at the rectory and adjacent farms and cottages with a small parking area. The circular churchyard is almost devoid of obstacles for the photographer.