England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Hazeleigh St Nicholas

The Parish

The parish of Hazeleigh lies in eastern Essex roughly 2 1/2 miles south of the port of Maldon. Hazeleigh sits on the B1010 road, a linking road between the A414 (Maldon to Chelmsford) road and the B1018 (Maldon to Southminster) road. Hazeleigh is a tiny place, a mere cluster of properties at a crossroads and a scatter of farms and cottages eastwards from there toward Hazeleigh Hall. It is the Hall which dominated life in the parish, a closed parish offering no inbound migration such that no formal village developed. Like most parishes in Essex arable farming was the main economic driver and today the fields abound with cereals, beet & oil-seed in broad open fields devoid largely of hedges. Modern developments have come to Hazeleigh but left, a branch railway line from Woodham Ferrers to Maldon having been in operation but since closed. Hazeleigh is drained eastwards by the Limbourne Creek the short distance to the Blackwater Estuary and onwards to the North Sea. Hazeleigh's church would have stood at around 20 metres above the sea with the main crossroads at 50 metres something of a local high point in gently rolling terrain. Even by Essex standards Hazeleigh parish was small, covering merely 900 acres it would have supported just under 150 parishioners. In Domesday times and held by one Ranulf Peveral Hazeleigh was also a tiny place offering merely a pair of ploughs and a small tract of woodland.

The Church

St Nicholas' church was demolished in 1922 with juts a handful of archival photos to record its passing. The church stood on the northern side of Hazeleigh Hall Lane and immediately west of the Hall, itself, a few gravestones remain in its former churchyard now rough and overgrown. The church was not one renowned ofr its longevity or indeed its architecture. The 16th century chancel being the oldest portion whilst the nave was a 17th century rebuild at which time a vestry & south porch were added. A typical Essex-style timber bell-turret marked the western end. Early gazetteers merely note it was of timber frame-work & plaster. To visit one must head northeast from Hazeleigh's crossroads for almost a mile before turning right into Hazeleigh Hall Lane, just before reaching the Hall's grounds one would see the gravestones over the hedging.