England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Fulstow St Lawrence

The Parish

The parish of Fulstow lies in northeastern Lincolnshire roughly 7 miles north of the market town of Louth. Fulstow sits a little over 2 miles east of the A16 road that links Louth with Great Grimsby. Fulstow is a crossroads settlement at a junction of lanes with most properties lining the lane running east to west or to its north between the junction and the church. Fulstow stands on the coastal plain, an area rather flat and low-lying with many man-made channels draining the area. At the time of this transcript a more varied farming landscape would have been in place, today the village is surrounded by a prairie-like expanse of cereal fields with few hedges and vast skies. Modern developments have come to the western edges of the parish, a railway line which once linked Louth & Grimsby has closed but a short stretch is now run as a heritage steam line, the Lincolnshire Wolds Railway. A maze of man-made ditches and rains takes water from the parish northeastwards before reaching the North Sea through Grainthorpe Haven. Fulstow is sited at between 4 and 10 metres above the sea with lower land between it & the North Sea, it takes over 2 miles westwards to cross the 20 metres contour on the eastern flank of the Lincolnshire Wolds. Fulstow parish was towards the large end of the scale for parishes in its county, covering just over 2,800 acres it would have supported a population of close to 500 parishioners. In Domesday times Fulstow recorded 66 households which was large enough to place it into the largest 20% of settlements recorded in the Book, the manor was shared 4-ways and had assets aggregated to 10 ploughs and an extensive meadow, the main assets was the phenomenal number of salthouses, 6 controlled by the bursar Robert, 8 by Count Alan of Brittany and 11 by the Bishop of Durham, a remarkable concentration if not double-counted.

The Church

St Lawrence's church sits on the northern edge of the village together with Manor Farm and accessed by the lane named Churchthorpe. This is a church with very little remaining of the medieval period and what remains is entirely internal following an extensive rebuild in 1868. The medieval fabric is limited to an arcade from a demolished Early English Gothic southern aisle and the remaining northern aisle, all 13th century as is the southern doorway. Everything else that we can see today dates from the rebuild of 1868, that rebuild, at least, kept more or less faithful to the Early English Gothic style with lancets. The church one had a skinny western tower which the work of 1868 replaced with today's rather tall bellcote. The access road to farm and church terminates at the farm, rough verges are acceptable for parking, the church sits east of the farm complex and is best approached on foot. Whilst the churchyard is mostly clear of obstacles there is a substantial tree at the southwestern corner which needs avoiding by the photographer.