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

The Parish

The parish of Sproughton lies in southern Suffolk roughly 3 miles west of the county town of Ipswich. Sproughton sits just under a mile north of the A1071 road which links Ipswich with Hadleigh and stands on the western banks of the River Gipping. Whilst Sproughton has grown as a commuter settlement for its large near neighbour it retains a village-feel around the church and the junction with the B1113, a much quieter road than in the past when it functioned as an unofficial bypass for Ipswich. At the time of this transcript Sproughton would have been a discrete farming community, largely arable but with access to riverside pastures along the Gipping. Today Sproughton is almost contiguous with Ipswich, only the narrow corridor of the Gipping preventing continuous development with wider Ipswich. Modern developments have come to the parish, the Gipping was canalised at an early time to enable transportation of the area's agricultural produce to Ipswich's docks whilst the modern A14 road, linking the East Coast ports through to the main motorway traffic, has not only returned the High Street to quiet but moves large volumes of traffic away from Ipswich and its surrounding villages. The Gipping drains the parish eastwards and then southeastwards through Ipswich to reach the nearby North Sea. Sproughton is sited at around 10 metres above the sea but away from the river land rises westwards steadily to around 50 metres in gentle terrain. Sproughton parish covered just under 2,400 acres making a large parish in this densely packed area, it would have supported a population of close to 600 parishioners. Sproughton is not mentioned in Domesday Book.

The Church

All Saints' church sits at the heart of the village standing at the junction of Lower Street and Church Lane and just west of the former's crossing of the Gipping. Pevsner states immediately in his opening remarks that All Saints was probably built in a single campaign around the turn of the 14th century and as such shows a unified style of architecture other than from Victorian restoration work. The church follows the standard layout of the time with a nave, a lower chancel and a western tower all augmented with aisles and arcades. The Decorated style of the early 14th century is followed throughout these structures. Later windows in the Perpendicular style have been inserted notably that of the chancel's east window. A bequest in a will of 1389 indicates that the northern aisle was also upgraded with newer windows at that time. Two phases of Victorian restoration are documented in Pevsner, the first of 1863 targeted the interior but the second of 1868 - 1870 made more of an impression on the external appearance, the southern porch was rebuilt, the battlementation added to the tower and the aisles were extended eastwards to accommodate a chapel and organ chamber finally and to the north a vestry was also added. In the apex of the junction a triangular area is set aside for church parking, a car or two may be safely accommodated. The churchyard is open and uncluttered with no obstacles for the photographer whatsoever.