England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Steeple St Lawrence & All Saints

The Parish

The parish of Steeple lies in southeastern Essex on the Dengie Peninsula and forming a stretch ot Essex's convoluted North Sea coastline. Steeple is located roughly 10 miles southeast of the port and market town of Maldon and sits a little over 2 miles north of the B1018 road which links Maldon with Southminster. Steeple is a linear village stretching along a single east to west running lane (The Street) for almost 3/4s of a mile. Much of the parish is coastal marshland, the parish has an extensive coastline with the outer Blackwater Estuary which would have served for activities such as wildfowling, reed harvesting and both fishing and shell-fishing, the Blackwater being noted for its oysters. In addition a small port took away the parish' corn harvest to the capital. Much of the parish is on reclaimed land with wetter lands being pasture and drier being dedicated to cereals. Mayland Creek drains the parish into the Blackwater and thence to the North Sea. Steeple is sited at around 10 metres above the sea with much of the parish below that height and below sea level in places, the Dengie Peninsula reaches its high point of 39 metres just southeast of Steeple. With so much reclaimed land the parish was quite extensive covering just over 2,700 acres and supporting a population of close to 600 parishioners. Domesday Steeple was a much smaller settlement of just 9 households, shared 3 ways its assets of only 2 ploughs indicate its size adequately.

The Church

St Lawrence & All Saints' church sits on the northern side of The Street roughly midway through the village. This is a Victorian replacement for a medieval predecessor that stood around 600 yards further west. The 14th century southern doorway from the old church together with  a late 14th century window now set into the northern wall of the nave both came from the original church being reused in the new build. Today's church was completed only in 1883 so is not the venue for these marriages. The church follows a standard layout of nave and chancel, its western end graced by a belfry - all is done in the Early English Gothic style from the 13th century. A feature of the church is the random assortment of differing coloured bricks and dressed stone fragments seemingly randomly, many find the result intriguing but it clearly annoyed the purist that was Pevsner. The Street is of ample width to allow on-street parking outside the churchyard gates. The church, however, sits uncomfortably close to the that boundary making the better landscape viewpoint from the street, the remainder of the churchyard is free of obstacles for the photographer.