England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Chelsfield St Martin of Tours

The Parish

The parish of Chelsfield lies in the extreme west of Kent not too far from its border with neighbouring Surrey. Chelsfield is located roughly 6 miles southeast of the town of Bromley and sits on the A224 road which connects Orpington with Sevenoaks. Chelsfield sits on the fringes of the great urban spread of Greater London, separated, just, by a green-belt from the ever-expanding sprawl of the capital. A distinct and separate village, still, Chelsfield sits just east of the A224 with church and Court Lodge standing to its west. At the time of this transcript Chelsfield would have primarily been a farming parish, a mixed regime of both arable and pastoral together with some orcharding and woodland management. Today Chelsfield sits surrounded by modern developments, the London to Sevenoaks railway line tunnels through to the west giving Chelsfield a station albeit remote from the village, whilst to the east runs the modern M25 motorway. There is little or no surface drainage around Chelsfield what there is makes its way northwards forming the infant River Cray, the latter runs northwards to join the Darenth just before meeting the outer Thames Estuary and the North Sea. Chelsfield is sited at around 130 metres aboce the sea, sitting on the dip-slope rising to the escarpment of the North Downs land rises steadily southwards reaching over 210 metres before the drop to the Weald. Chelsfield parish was large for its area, covering almost 4,700 acres it is more reminiscent in size to an upland parish, within those confines would have been close to 1,500 parishioners, most scattered widely across the area with a relatively small percentage within the village that gives the name. In Domesday times Chelsfield was one of the many holdings of Bishop Odo of Bayeux, a modest holding at that time offering 10 ploughs, meadows & woodland and there was a mill.

The Church

St Martin of Tours' church sits west of the A224 accessed along Church Road which heads towards Pratt's Bottom from the busy main road. This is an ancient church dating from the immediate post-Conquest and largely built in the Norman Romanesque style of the 12th century. Both nave and chancel show this style whilst herringbone laying of the flints in the southern wall of the chancel hints at possible Saxon origins too. The church received a major enlargement in the 13th century, the nave was lengthened and the eastern wall of the chancel rebuilt and showing the lancet windows characteristic of the Early English Gothic period. Also 13th century are the south aisle and the curiously placed northern tower. The great church-building era of the Perpendicular largely passed by with only the southern porch added during that period. Like most churches there was a Victorian restoration, in this case of 1857, which rebuilt the chancel arch and re-purposed the northeastern annexe as a vestry amongst a general refresh. Church Road is sufficiently wide to permit parking close to the entrance gates where a signboard marks the pathway leading to the churchyard. Whilst the landscape views from the southeast are acceptable, closely clustered trees substantially remove the other angles for the photographer.