England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Belton All Saints

The Parish

The parish of Belton lies in the extreme northeast of Suffolk forming a stretch of the county's border with neighbouring Norfolk. Belton is located around 4 miles southwest of the Norfolk port of Great Yarmouth and sits about a mile northwest of the A143 road which links Great Yarmouth with Beccles. Belton is a village which has grown markedly in modern times, early maps show a rather linear village lying along the present Station Road with a side collection of properties gathered around the church. Belton has developed as a dormitory suburb for both Great Yarmouth & Lowestoft and now has a population of over 4,000 living in an oblong of properties a half mile north to south and a little more than that east to west. Belton sits close to the River Waveney, which forms the county border, and which diversified the local economy, Belton Marshes being a mixture of grazing marsh as well as home to traditional Broadland trades such as reed harvesting & wildfowling. These varied the traditional arable farming of the region. Modern developments have come and gone, the reference of Station Road is to the former branch railway line linking Great Yarmouth with the Norwich to Lowestoft line at Haddiscoe which once existed but has now been largely dismantled. The Waveney drains the parish northeastwards to Great Yarmouth where it meets the North Sea. Belton is sited at below 10 metres in a landscape where 15 metres represents the highest land height for some considerable distance. At just over 2,000 acres Belton parish was fairly typically sized for its area, within that acreage it would have supported a population, at the time of this transcript, of around 450 parishioners. In Domesday times Belton was a tiny place of a mere 9 households, it was retained by King William and only offered a pair of ploughs.

The Church

All Saints' church sits on the eastern side of today's much grown village on the western side of Church Lane. The round tower which is normally a sign of an ancient church is here unreliable as it is the construct of a rebuild from 1849, however it is likely it replaced a vulnerable original of Norman age. The medieval does remain, however, in both nave and chancel which date from the early 14th century and are good examples of the Decorated style prevalent in the first half of that century. Perpendicular styling from the latter half appears only in the southern porch which shows the flush-worked flint panelling common in the east. Besides the 1849 rebuild of the tower two further phases tackled the church, the chancel being restored in 1866 and the nave in 1881. Even into modern times work has continued with a northern extension added in 1994. The churchyard sits at right-angles to Church Lane with a triangular roughly surfaced parking area marking where a path leads to the church. The extensive churchyard is open & uncluttered with no obvious obstacles for the photographer.