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

The Parish

The parish of Tolleshunt Knights lies in eastern Essex not too far from its eastern North Sea coastline. Tolleshunt Knights is located roughly 9 miles northeast of the small port & town of Maldon and sits about a half mile north of the B1023 road which links Tollesbury with the A12 (London to Ipswich road) at Kelvedon. Early maps show Tolleshunt Knights as a rather scattered community with no real centre, today's village is rather linear stretching from the B1023, where it almost connects with neighbouring Tiptree, along a southeasterly running lane for almost 3/4s of a mile. Like most Essex parishes Tolleshunt Knights is a farming parish that, again like most, specialises in arable farming with cereals in the main the main crop augmented today by beet & oil-seed. Modern developments came late to the parish with construction of the Kelvedon, Tiptree & Tollesbury Light Railway (fondly known as the Crab & Winkle line) in 1904, sadly this line close in 1951 and is dismantled. Tolleshunt Knights is drained eastwards by the Layer Brook, the course of which is soon interrupted by Abberton Reservoir before emerging as the Roman River and entering the nearby North Sea as part of the Colne Estuary. Tolleshunt Knights is sited at around 50 metres above the sea in rather gentle terrain where local high spots gradually rise westwards to around 75 metres. At almost 2,100 acres Tolleshunt Knights was quite an extensive parish for its area and would have supported a population of close to 300 parishioners. In Domesday times the 3 Tolleshunt villages (Knights, D'Arcy & Major) were all recorded as  single entity with no obvious assignment of the landholdings to each distinct village, 9 landholders had variously sized holdings and the collective assets of 26 ploughs supplemented by extensive meadows, pastures and woodlands were augmented by no fewer than 13 salthouses making for a wealthy holding indeed for a settlement whose recorded population of 149 households firmly placed it in the top 20% of settlements by population.

The Church

All Saints' church ceased to be an Anglican church in 1957 following deconsecration it was acquired by the Eastern Orthodox Community albeit not as their principal site of worship which lies at St Silouan the Athonite chapel. The former church sits well away from its village i.e. nearly a mile and a half along the partially adopted Rectory Road . Like many small and isolated churches it has really ancient fabric untouched from the earliest times when stone-built churches began to appear in the 12th century. The nave is 12th century and Norman Romanesque in style. The great wealth of the area in later medieval times saw some improvement and alteration in the 14th/15th centuries when the chancel was rebuilt and extended using the Perpendicular style of that era, a northern doorway and a single window were also replaced in the nave at that time. Everything sat relatively undisturbed until Victorian times when various restorations are mentioned by Pevsner, that of the late 1870s added the western bellcote and a second in 1896 rebuilt the timber porch on its brick base of c1600. Acquisition by the Orthodox community saw the interior reordered to their style including an open ironwork iconostasis  and screening the eastern end into a vestry. Rectory Road, officially a road used as a public path, wanders for almost a mile and a half to reach the church which stands in a semi-parkland type environment with many trees all around, the site has no boundary designating the sacred space and parking is relatively straightforward. Fir the photographer it is merely a matter if finding suitable angles to view between all of the small trees.