England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Frinsted St Dunstan

The Parish

The parish of Frinsted, sometimes rendered Frinstead, lies in the northern portion of central Kent some 4 miles south of the market town of Sittingbourne. Frinsted sits within a large area devoid of significant numbered roads, the closest such roads being at Sittingbourne, itself, where the A2 from London to Canterbury passes through. Frinsted is a tiny place with a few scattered farms and cottages mostly lying along a narrow lane running from west to east in a loose and informal cluster. Frinsted sits on the fore-slope of the North Downs, a gently rising plain sloping upwards from the coastal marshes towards the chalk downs, the rich soils lending themselves to arable production so that the greater part of the parish acreage was set to arable. Modern maps show several woodland patches and this, too, was an important crop for the parish. There is no obvious surface drainage across these porous tracts and most water follows either field rains or sub-surface eventually to fall into the Swale's estuary about 6 miles to the north. Frinsted is sited at around 150 metres above the sea with land continuing to rise southwestwards to a local high spot of 197 metres above the escarpment of the North Downs. This area of the county has many small and little populated parishes and Frinsted was typical of that type, covering just short of 1,300 acres it would have supported a population of around 200 parishioners. In Domesday, too, Frinsted was a small place of just 3 household offering just a single plough together with meadows and that woodland to its landholder Bishop Odo of Bayeux.

The Church

St Dunstan's church sits to the north of the cluster of farms and cottages that make up the notional centre of Frinsted, on the eastern side of Gossy Hill Road which heads toward Sittingbourne. Whilst the church has traces of a 12th century origin, a tiny and reset Norman Romanesque style window on the south face together with late 12th century arcades to both nave and chancel are all that remain of that early church. The church has been repeatedly improved at the expense of the largest local land owners the Leigh-Pemberton family. Also medieval is the early 14th century northern aisle in the Decorated style and the plain western tower of the later Perpendicular period. Two major Victorian phases of restoration funded by the Leigh-Pembertons are recorded in Pevsner, the first a 5-year campaign from 1856 to 1861 saw much rebuilding including of the northern chapel whilst the second from 1867 - 1870 followed. Gossy Hill Road is narrow but there is a broad entrance-way with a park bench to the south of the site where a car may be discretely parked. The tree-edged churchyard is rather tightly constrained leaving little room to retire away for better views and making for a challenge to the photographer to adequately record this church.