Where did your ancestors marry?

Peter invited this topic in his LC Newsletter of 10/07/2015:
Some parishes attracted more than their fair share of couples from other parishes - as I was working my way through Essex registers I noticed that the parish of Good Easter seemed to be extremely popular, so I wasn't surprised to find that my ancestors David Bates and Ann Shuttleworth married there in 1735-36, even though both were resident in Shellow Bowells. In fact, of the 10 marriages that took place at Good Easter that year, only one involved a couple who both lived in the parish - 6 were of couples who both lived elsewhere. There could well be similar parishes in the counties where you're researching - if so, this is just the sort of information I'd like you to post on the LostCousins Forum.

That reminds me of a Colyton, Devon study (which I thought I first read in an old LC Newsletter but cannot now retrieve) so this is a first draft of something I'm preparing to post elsewhere on a Devon list.

The number of marriages between 1650 and 1750 in the Colyton, Devon PRs has been considered too low for the associated number of baptisms, as reported by Pamela Sharpe in 1992. She found that the "missing marryers" came from a broad cross-section of the town, that a significant number of Colyton couples chose to marry in adjacent parishes such as Shute and Seaton & Beer, and noted (albeit in rather more scholarly language) that the vicar of Farway had a nice little earner from marrying Colyton couples about the same time (1665-1676) that the Colyton vicar was particularly unpopular. But that alone did not account for the shortfall in the Colyton marriage register. She found no evidence of clandestine marriages in the area and concluded that a substantial nonconformist congregation within Colyton chose not to marry within the canons of the high Anglican church but were openly married locally by a nonconformist minister such that no record was entered in the Anglican PR and any other nonconformist record has not survived. They did, however, continue to baptise and bury within the established Anglican church - probably (my speculation) because baptism established settlement rights within the parish and burial provided consecrated ground.

That would compromise the integrity of any family trees that rely on the Anglican marriage register for Colyton because unknown nonconformist missing marryers could not be excluded from such ancestries. Peter's observation about Shellow Bowells/Great Easter may be similar to the Colyton/Farwell scenario. Was there, perhaps, a strong nonconformist congregation in that area of Essex?

That is just a brief summary but Pamela Sharpe's article was published in Local Population Studies 1992 vol 48 pp 49-59, and is available online here.

 

The first chapel at Peak Forest was built during the Civil War, by Christiana, Dowager Countess of Devonshire, a loyal supporter of the Crown. Her son Charles died during the War, in 1643, fighting for the Royalist cause. The church is dedicated to King Charles the Martyr.

‘This was originally a free chapelry in the king's forest, and was extra-episcopal and extra-parochial, and up to 1804, when it was abolished by Act of Parliament, there was an average of 80 weddings annually, which might fairly be termed "Gretna" marriages.’

(quote from Kelly’s Directory 1891.)

 

Norton in the Moors in Staffordshire was the local "Gretna" for The Potteries.

I've some Micklethwaites married at Peak Forest - the registers don't give any helpful information.