England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Sudbury All Saints

The Parish

The parish of Sudbury lies in southwestern Derbyshire and forms part of the border, here performed by the River Dove, with neighbouring Staffordshire. Sudbury is located about 5 miles east of the Staffordshire market town of Uttoxeter and sits immediately south of the busy A50 dual-carriageway that forms a connection from Stoke Upon Trent through to the M1 motorway close to east Midland Airport. Sudbury is a rather linear route built, as it was, on the former route of the A50 now a broad lane through the village, the A50 now passing close by to the north. Sudbury was dominated by its eponymous Hall the residence of the Vernon family, a late 17th century mansion set in parkland, including the church, which is now managed by the National Trust, the mansion merits many paragraphs within Pevsner as an important architectural legacy. The parishioners of Sudbury would have largely earned the income from pastoral farming, the village sits on the banks of the Dove and they would have exploited the grazing meadows alongside its course. The Dove drains the parish eastwards merging into the Trent to the northeast of Burton Upon Trent it then carried on to reach the North Sea through the Humber Estuary. Sudbury is sited at around 70 metres above the sea, its sits within a valley but land rises steadily northwards reaching local heights of close to 130 metres in fairly gentle terrain. Sudbury was fairly typically sized for a Derbyshire lowland parish, it covered close to 3,600 acres and would have supported a population of around 600 parishioners. In Domesday times the greater portion of Sudbury was held by Burton Abbey with a smaller share in the hands of Henry de Ferrers, it was a substantial place even then offering 16 ploughs as well as the usual meadows & woodland and also possessed a mill.

The Church

All Saints' church sits within the parkland grounds of Sudbury Hall at the western end of the village and sits just to the northwest of the Hall accessed by a driveway from the former route of the A50, now Main Road. As an estate church the wishes of the Vernon family are very evident in what is a much modified church. Whilst traces remain of earlier origins they are that, merely traces. The remains of a Norman south doorway, arches which are double-chamfered and fashionable in the 13th century within the arcades and a blocked 14th century doorway are all that indicate a long history on the site. The church was almost complete rebuilt in the 1870s at the Vernon's expense and today almost everything bar the traces looks 19th century. Parking is available in the extensive National Trust car park facing the hall and it is a short walk to the churchyard which is clear, uncluttered and with no obstacles to photography.