England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Priors Dean Parish Church

The Parish

The parish of Priors Dean lies in eastern Hampshire not too far from the county's border with neighbouring Sussex. Priors Dean is located roughly 4 miles north of the market town of Petersfield and sits in an area devoid of significant numbered roads midway between the A3 (London to Portsmouth) and A32 (Alton to Fareham) road being over 3 miles away from each. Priors Dean is a tiny place, not sufficiently large enough to even merit a place name on modern Ordnance Survey maps, it consists solely of farming land with a mixture of light soils, suitable for crops, on higher ground and heavy clays, with pastures, in the valleys. Across the wider pariah there is merely a scatter of farms and cottages. Priors Dean's church sits within one of such dry valleys, which heads southeast and eventually results in the emergence of the Oakshott Stream which runs into the River Rother, the latter heads eastwards through Susses seeking a gap in the church before reaching the English Channel through the port of Littlehampton. At the church Priors Dean is sited at 170 metres above the sea but rolling chalk hills rise to local heights of 238 metres to the southwest and 220 metres to the north. Priors Dean parish at just over 1,400 acres was fairly typically sized for this area, within that acreage it would have supported a population of around 150 parishioners. Priors Dean is not mentioned in Domesday Book.

The Church

The parish church has no known dedication, it sits, as already noted, in a dry valley running from northwest to southeast from Colemore through to the south of Hawkley, the church is sited in a fork of lanes. Rightfully Pevsner calls the church "tiny and enchanting", a relic of early times indeed. At its core the main fabric probably dates from the period of the first half of the 12th century, Pevsner places it c1120-1130 which places it firmly within the Norman Romanesque period of styling. The following century, the 13th, saw the internal roofing place, open trusses, and added a lancet style window typical of the Early English Gothic period, now blocked. There was little change thereafter until the Victorians made their intervention, a restoration of 1857 inserted lancets in a faux Norman style and added the spired timber bell-turret as well as most of the internal furnishings. The lane passing the churchyard is roughened from frequent visitors verge-parking and allows careful parking to avoid blocking said lane. A small wooden gate under trees forms the main entrance to a churchyard which is expansive and with all of the favoured aspects available to the photographer.