Two Weddings

When researching family stories it is amazing how many coincidences you come across, this is story of two weddings the first in 1791 and one in 1995.

My tale starts with the second wedding which was ours. Having decided to get married we then had to pick a venue, although there is quite a lot of choice around Enfield where we live and Hertfordshire where my parents live (making everyone go to Malaysia did not seem a good idea), we did not really like any of the places on offer, many of them just looked like conference centre rooms, and those that were more special or unique could not cater for enough people. I can’t remember who’s mad suggestion is was but we ended up booking a marquee in parents garden in Hertfordshire. Now we had a venue for the reception where to actually get married, we are not very church going people but decided we did want to get married there. Back in 1995 the rules were more restrictive on church weddings, which meant you could only get married in your parish or at a stretch your parents, this gave us a choice of 2, one in Ayot St Lawrence and one in Kimpton.

My choice was the Ayot St Lawrence church, we had been inside on one of our country. It is quite different and quirky, it was designed in a neo-classical style by Nicholas Revett and features a Palladian-style frontage with Doric columns. In side the ceiling is painted a dark blue with stars. First problem was not quite sure we would get all the guests inside, also from the back it did look a bit like a crematorium, and lastly my husband-to-be objected because he’d read a description the the gentleman who paid for the church building that he and his wife were buried either side because “the church that has kept us together in life could keep them apart in death!”

Fortunately my second choice St Peter and St Paul in Kimpton, is lovely really beautiful old church sitting on top of a hill, so we decided on this and approached the vicar to make arrangements. Our wedding took place on a glorious sunny afternoon in September.

Some 20 years later whilst researching our family history I was looking into Florence Coots family, my maternal great-grandmother, her father was born in Flamtsead Hertfordshire, a long line of agricultural labourers and straw platters. Florence’s mother was Eliza Burgess following back along the Burgess line to then John Burgess his wife Sarah Riddle, we come to Sarah’s parents Joseph Riddle b. 1770 and Hannah Dimmock b. 1771.

I was working my way through all their details, baptism, death and finally marriage, looking carefully at all the details to ensure I had traced the correct people, I found myself gasping out load when I realised what I had read, Hannah Dimmock married Joseph Riddle on the 24th of July 1791 in Kimpton Hertford England, could Hannah & Joseph really have got married in the same church as we did?

My next step was to investigate churches in Kimpton around the time of their marriage 1791 and as I suspected it was the only church in Kimpton at that time, so we had got married in the same church as my 5th great grandparents, some 204 years later!