England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Allington St Swithun

The Parish

The parish of Allington lies in southwestern Dorset not too far from its English Channel coastline. Allington sits immediately west of Bridport with only the course of the River Brit separating the two, in reality both are joint members of the same urban area. Allington sits on the former route of the A35 road which today bypasses both Allington and Bridport to their south much relief from traffic being granted. Early maps show Allington as two distinct streets, the former A35 running east to west and the route of today's B3162 headed northwards. Modern developments have extended the village in both of these directions whilst also infilling the angle between them, albeit constrained by the isolated hill of Allington Hill. Allington's relatively small parish acreage was almost equally farmed by pastoral and arable methods if the estimates of early gazetteers are reliable, within the village there were cloth manufacturies which made much use of the local flax & hemp crops in making sail cloth in particular. Allington is drained by a combination of the River Brit and the River Simene which conjoin to its south to run the short distance to the English Channel at West Bay. Allington is sited below 10 metres above the sea at the church whilst its higher suburbs rise to 30 metres, Allington Hill fails to reach much more than 80 metres whilst further west hills rise to 150 metres such as at Quarry Hill in rolling countryside. As already mentioned Allington was a small parish covering just 592 acres yet supported a population approaching 1,500 parishioners, naturally some would have chosen to marry in nearby Bridport explaining the relatively few marriages recorded here. In Domesday times Allington was a rather small place, a holding of a Saxon survivor Turstin, offering merely 2 ploughs, typical meadows, pastures & woodland but it did possess a mill.

The Church

St Swithun's church sits within the crook of the junction of Allington's two main roads at the base of Allington Hill. As can readily be seen this is not the original medieval church in which the majority of these marriages would have been celebrated but rather only the final 10 years of this transcript as the church was a replacement completed in 1827. Whilst a relatively new building the frontage, especially, is a characterful creation with a portico flanked by Tuscan columns carrying a pediment all topped by a circular cupola. In defiance of convention the altar, internally, sits at the western end of the building. The church is accessed from the B3162, here named simply North Allington, through either a park-like frontage or from a tarred driveway, parking is available at the northern side of the church from that driveway. Sadly this is a severely constrained site with trees and adjacent building crowding the northern and southern faces, in reality it is only that eastern frontage which attracts the photographer and that is available readily.