England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Morningthorpe St John the Baptist

The Parish

The parish of Morningthorpe lies in southeastern Norfolk roughly 10 miles northwest of the Suffolk market town of Bungay and 14 miles south of the city of Norwich. Morningthorpe is located a mile east of the A140 road which connects Norwich with Ipswich, it is a small village largely grouped around its church along a north to south running lane. Rather unusually the parish is an elongated strip of land on the same axis as that lane, thin west to east but lengthy north to south. Like most Norfolk parishes Morningthorpe would have earned its income from arable farming and that is still very much the case on easy to work soils growing excellent yields of cereals in particular. Morningthorpe is drained northwards and then west by tributaries of the River Tas which is joined to the west of Tasburgh, the Tas meets the Yare on the outskirts of Norwich turning east to reach the North Sea through the port of Great Yarmouth.  is sited at around 50 metres above the sea in rather flat terrain where local high spots still fail to break the 60 metre contour for several miles. At just over 1,000 acres Morningthorpe parish was a small parish for its county supporting a population of around 200 parishioners. Morningthorpe's entries in Domesday Book reveal either a much more significant settlement than today's small village or else they refer to a region rather than a single manor, shared between Count Alan of Brittany and Bury St Edmunds the book documents an impressive 19 ploughs, 30 acres of meadow and a mill.

The Church

St John's church sits on the eastern side of the main north to south running lane through the village approximately midway through the built area. One's eye is immediately drawn to the round tower, a feature usually indicative of an early church in East Anglia. Pevsner does not disappoint documenting the basal portion as 12th century Norman Romanesque. A similar age of fabric is found too in the arch that connects that tower to the nave and in a round-headed window now cut into and blacked by the later southern porch. Whilst these features relate to the earliest church here it is also evident that the church was much modified, almost rebuilt, east of the tower, during the later medieval period. Here both nave and chancel show the styles, newly fashionable in the mid-14th century, of the Perpendicular period, the chancel arch, in particular, being clearly mid-14th century. Later versions of Perpendicular from the 15th century are used in the topmost stage of that western tower, a donation in a will of 1504 indicating the likely date of those flourishes. As is usual a Victorian restoration completes the major building work, here it fell in 1889 and renewed the roofs, east window and southern porch, the battlemented parapet to the tower may be from this work or an unknown earlier 19th century effort. The lane passing the churchyard has a broad gravelled surface allowing a relaxed off-road site for parking several vehicles, broad wooden gates grant entry into a churchyard that has no significant obstacles for the photographer.