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

The Parish

The parish of East Guldeford lies in the extreme east of Sussex, indeed it forms part of the border with neighbouring Kent and is also very close to Sussex' English Channel coast. East Guldeford is located about 2 miles east of the former port Rye in the flatlands of Romney Marsh. East Guldeford sits astride the A259 road which links Rye with the Kent town of Ashford. There is very little to East Guldeford except a straggle of properties long the main road, just south of the railway crossing, plus scattered farms and cottages across a broad swathe of marshland. The land use at the time of this transcript (and indeed today) is largely pastoral farming on land reclaimed from the sea. This is low lying country, East Guldeford is located at just 3 metres above the sea and headed eastwards there is not a contour on the Ordnance Survey maps for over 7 miles. All of the drainage in the parish is man made and is elevated by pump and sluice into the River Rother which runs as the boundary between East Guldeford and its larger neighbour Rye. East Guldeford parish was of a typical size for Sussex, it covered 2,700 acres but supported a mere 130 parishioners. There is no specific mention of East Guldeford in Domesday Book, it is presumed to have been recorded in the assessment of Rye.

The Church

St Mary's church lies just east of the A259 at the northern end of the hamlet. The church is a curious building, twin roofed with a sunken bell-turret between the two. The extensive bracing buttresses are a tribute to the unsupported substrate that the church is built upon. The build and consecration dates of St Mary are extensively documented and place its build in 1499 and its consecration 6 years later. The building was extensively remodeled in the early 19th century whence the window tracery was restyled. St Mary's is accessed from the A259 by an unsurfaced track passing between the bungalows that line the road. The building is set in a very open graveyard surrounded by pastures and presents no hindrance to photography.