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

The Parish

The parish of Lingwood lies in eastern Norfolk roughly 9 miles east of the city of Norwich. Lingwood sits just over a mile south of the busy A47 road which crosses Norfolk from west to east linking Norwich with the port of Great Yarmouth. Previously a small and typically sized Norfolk village Lingwood has grown significantly in modern times to become a large village dominated by new housing developments, a tribute to its new-won status as a commuter settlement for the nearby city. At the time of this transcript Lingwood would have been a typical Norfolk arable farming village with arable crops dominating the farming regime. Modern developments have come to Lingwood, it having a station on the Norwich to Great Yarmouth, via Acle, railway line encouraging commuting from the village. Lingwood sits just north of the valley of the River Yare and most surface drainage heads south to that river which reaches the nearby North Sea through Great Yarmouth. Lingwood is sited at around 20 metres above the sea in very gentle terrain, land varies little more than 10 metres from that mark for many a mile. Even by the standards of a county with numerous small parishes, Lingwood covered a tiny acreage of only just over 650 acres, within that small area a population of a little over 450 parishioners would have been supported. Lingwood is not specifically mentioned in Domesday Book.

The Church

St Peter's church sits on the northern edge of the expanding village on the eastern side of Church Road which connects the village with the nearby A47. The church is largely a 14th century creation with most fabric within the later Perpendicular style of that and the following century. Documentary evidence shows donations for work on the tower from both 1487 & 1537 but the presence of a Decorated style window belies the fact that the tower dates back almost a century further than that. Elsewhere the evidence is entirely Perpendicular or indeed from the 19th century Victorian restoration. Whilst the main eastern window shows the Perpendicular style rather well it is, in fact, dateable to that restoration. The church is well provided with parking, both a temporary pull-in and car park are available. The largely unfenced churchyard has many mature trees gathered around the entrance gate but once within there are no obstacles for the photographer.