England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Burston St Mary the Virgin

The Parish

The parish of Burston lies in the extreme south of Norfolk not too far from the county's border with neighbouring Suffolk. Burston is located just under 3 miles northeast of the market town of Diss and stands about 2 miles west of the A140 road which links Norwich with Ipswich. Burston is a compact crossroads village with most properties gathered around a crossroads of lanes, small hamlets dot the wider parish such as Mill Green and Bridge Green and holding smaller settlements. Burston is famous for its "strike school", the teachers of the parish supported striking farm workers in 1914 and were dismissed for their supporting strike, after a lengthy stand-off a public subscription funded an independent school allowing the teachers to reume their duties in 1917, the school is now a museum dedicated to those events. Burston stands on very fertile soils and level terrain making it ideal for the growing of cereals, vast prairie-like fields now dominate the area where a more diverse rotation would have been in place at the time of this transcript. Modern developments have come to the parish, the railway line from Norwich to London passing through to the east without granting Burston a station. Burston is drained southwards by a small stream which soon meets the Waveney, and the county border, to the east of Diss, the Waveney heads east and then north to reach Breydon Water and pass through Great Yarmouth to the North Sea. Burston is sited at around 40 metres above the sea, a height showing little variation either way for some considerable distance in this largely flat terrain. Burston parish was typically sized for its area covering a little over 1,400 acres which would have supported a population of close to 450 parishioners. Domesday Burston was just of sufficient size to make it into the top 20% of settlements by population, albeit that has a low bar, shared between Robert Malet and King William it mustered assets of just 3 ploughs and a small set of meadows making it difficult to reconcile with that rating and reflecting just a small rural farming manor.

The Church

St Mary's church stands just west of the main crossroads in the village on the northern side of Diss Road. As can readily be seen the church has been left tower-less as a consequence of the collapse of its medieval tower, this fell in 1753 necessitating the construction of the large buttresses to prop up the nave's western wall. What remains is, therefore, merely the nave with a southern porch almost all of which dates from the Perpendicular era subject to modification in Victorian times. That Victorian restoration rebuilt the chancel and its accompanying vestry as part of an extensive body of work in 1859 which has produced a relatively modern-looking building. Just outside the churchyard gates a graveled area of verge is set aside for a single car to park off-road. A thick screen of mature trees partially hides the church from the road and a similar theme causes a few of the normally favoured aspects to be removed from the photographer's portfolio, only a relative few sight-lines remain.