England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Ullingswick St Luke

The Parish

The parish of Ullingswick lies in east central Herefordshire about 5 miles southwest of the small market town of Bromyard. Ullingswick sits in lanes about 2 miles north of the A465 road which connects Bromyard with Hereford. Of modern day Ullingswick there is very little, a scatter of farms and cottages across a gentle valley holding a small stream. Ullingswick would have been an agricultural settlement dominated by pastoral farming, with a few orchards and hop fields to add variety, little has changed today. The shallow valley holds a small tributary of the River Lugg which drains the parish southwards joining the Lugg and then the Wye to the east of Hereford and thence to the Bristol Channel through the port of Chepstow. Ullingswick is sited at around 100 metres above the sea but land rises in rolling hills to the north to reach 254 metres on nearby Hegdon Hill. Herefordshire parishes are often small and Ullingswick was no exception, it covered just under 1,200 acres and would have supported a population in the region of 300 parishioners. In Domesday times Ullingswick was held by the Canons of Hereford, a small place, even then, of just 9 ploughs albeit there was a salthouse.

The Church

St Luke's church sits to the northeast of most of Ullingswick's properties accessed along a narrow dead-end lane. The church is old, and Pevsner rightly points out the Norman Romanesque features in the nave gibing that piece a 12th century date, although the presence of lancet windows in the Early English Gothic style indicate a lengthening in the 13th century. Of a similar date are the chancel windows. The church, like so many, however, was extensively modified in Victorian times. The chancel was restored in 1856 and then a further restoration of 1862 added the southern porch and remodeled the bell-turret to its present form. Finally in the 20th century the vestry was added in 1950. From Ullingswick's notional centre the lane swings first northwest and sharply northeast to reach the site where there is ample parking beside the pretty lychgate. The churchyard has many trees which crowd around the western end limiting the views of that bell-turret but to the south and east views are uninterrupted.