England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Aldham St Mary

The Parish

The parish of Aldham lies in southern Suffolk about 3miles northeast of the market town of Hadleigh. Aldham is a tiny place, little more than a hamlet, which sits about 2 miles north of the A1071 road which connects Hadleigh with Ipswich. Aldham consists primarily of a strip of properties lining either side of a minor lane running northeastwards from Hadleigh towards Burstall, the church and Hall, a mixture of 15th & 16th century fabric, are together south of that lane. It would appear that Aldham was a closed parish, with most land held by a few landholders who restricted inbound migration thus no defined village was created. The soils hereabouts are a thick and stodgy clay, in early times difficult to work so the landscape would have had a more mixed farming regime than is common in Suffolk, today, with modern machinery, it has become a typical arable landscape. Aldham is drained westwards by a small tributary of the River Brett, when that stream is met things turn southward before reaching the Stour at the border with Essex, here a final turn to the east before meeting the North Sea between the twin ports of Felixstoe & Harwich. Aldham is sited at around 60 metres above the sea in gentle terrain where land above 70 metres is quite rare. Aldham parish was typically sized for a southern rural farming parish, covering close to 1,700 acres it would have supported a population of around 300 parishioners. In Domesday times two landholders shared Aldham, Aubrey de Vere had the main holding with a subsidiary with Bury St Edmunds Abbey, collectively their assets totalled an impressive 14 ploughs, the usual meadows & woodland and also there were 2 mills making for a more than modest settlement.

The Church

As already noted St Mary's church sits alongside the Hall roughly a quarter mile south of the main land through the parish and at the Hadleigh end of said lane. It is customary when presented with a round-towered church in East Anglia to open with a phrase stating that it is usually indicative of an early church, this would normally be the case but for St Mary all dating detail was lost in an over-zealous rebuild by the Victorians in the mid-1880s. That western round tower, they are typically Saxo-Norman or Norman and as early as 11th or 12th century, was rebuilt from above a height of 6 metres. In this audacious rebuild the southern wall and most of the northern wall of the nave was also rebuilt, the church was re-roofed and given a replacement chancel arch and a new southern porch. As if to add insult to injury in the 1940s most of the chancel was also rebuilt. The result is a church almost devoid of dating detail, all Pevsner was able to state was that the window style, if faithful when renewed, is that of the c1300 and the western tower was almost likely to be earlier still. Church Lane, which leads to both church and hall, carries a small white sign at its departure from The Street, it ends after a left fork in a roughly surfaced parking area outside the churchyard. Within the typical flint & brick walling the churchyard is open and uncluttered with no obstacles for the photographer.