England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Stallingborough St Peter & St Paul

The Parish

The parish of Stallingborough lies in the extreme northeast of Lincolnshire forming a stretch of the county's North Sea coastline, here where the mouth of the Humber Estuary meets the sea. Stallingborough is located about 6 miles northwest of the port of Great Grimsby and sits on and mostly east of the former route of the A180, now downgraded to the B1210, which links Great Grimsby through to Brigg and the motorway network. Stallingborough is a rather linear village stretching from the B1210 for over 3/4s of a mile between that old A180 and its newer version. At its southwestern end the linear model is broadened by development to the north towards the parish church. Stallingborough parish has acquired much modern infrastructure with its coastline, in particular, become quite industrialised with industrial estates & works and power stations. At the time of this transcript, and indeed still today, Stallingborough was a farming parish and largely pastoral, the mix may have switched more towards arable but much of the parish sits on low-lying fertile soils. Modern developments have come to the parish, the railway line linking Great Grimsby to the main East Coast line passes through the parish granting Stallingborough a station and the A180 is nowadays a fast dual-carriageway highway. Three man-made drains take most of the water from the parish, the North Beck, Middle & Oldfleet Drains, passing it into the outer Humber Estuary and thus to the North Sea. Stallingborough is sited at around 5 metres above the sea on the largely flat coastal plain, land rises gently southwestwards to around 40 metres beyond nearby Keelby. Stallingborough parish was an extensive parish by Lincolnshire standards covering 4,000 acres and supporting a population of close to 450 parishioners. Domesday Stallingborough was one of those manors which just creeps into the top 20% of settlements by population, it was shared between 4 landholders with assets of just 8 ploughs, extensive meadows but also 3 mills and 6 salthouses.

The Church

St Peter & St Paul's church sits a little way from the main village street accessed along the meandering Church Lane to the north. As can readily be seen the church is a relatively modern one, it was built in 1780 during the period of the transcript not as some willful act of the local gentry but due to a disaster as in 1746 the previous medieval church was destroyed when the tower collapsed into the main body. The 18th century replacement has the nave & chancel in one with a western tower capped by a pyramidal roof and with much use of brick rather than the traditional materials of this area, flint. Despite the relative recent completion there has been time for 2 Victorian restorations, the first of 1874 tackled the chancel whilst the second of 1884 impacted the tower. Church Lane ends at the church in a broad turning area and car park outside the gates, the church is still hidden from here as it sits within thick tree cover, that tree cover proves to be highly impactful upon the views of the church which area available. The southern aspects are completely removed and only a few selected angles are available for the photographer, a very challenging subject.