England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Lurgashall St Laurence

The Parish

The parish of Lurgashall lies in the extreme northwest of Sussex forming part of the border with neighbouring Surrey and it is also has an extensive border with the detached Hampshire parish of Steep, too. Lurgashall is located about 4 miles northeast of the small town of Midhurst and sits a little over a mile west of the A283 road which connects Godalming all the way through to Shoreham on the coast. Lurgashall is a small place, little more than a hamlet grouped around a small square of lanes in the northern Weald of Sussex. The poor soils of this area left it relatively depopulated at the time of this transcript, large parts of Lurgashall parish were described as "waste" in early gazetteers. Today it remains a healthy mixture of farming and remaining tracts of forest and meadow. Lurgashall is drained southwards by a small tributary of the River Rother which is soon joined, after joining the Arun the English Channel is reached to the west of Littlehampton. Lurgashall is sited at around 50 metres above the sea but northern parts of the parish rise on to the greenstone to heights of 280 metres on Black Down. Wealden parishes tend to be large in extent and Lurgashall was typical of that, covering just under 4,900 acres it would have supported a population of just under 800 parishioners. Lurgashall is not specifically mentioned in Domesday Book which has sparse coverage of The Weald.

The Church

St Laurence's church sits to the northeast of the main village centre accessed by a long path from the Noah's Ark Inn. The church has ancient origins displayed in the 11th century nave which is tall and unbuttressed, whilst a specific date other than to the century is given the nave may well predate the Conquest. The chancel is later and 13th century showing lancets of the Early English Gothic style whilst the tower, attached to the southeastern corner of the nave, a curious position, is 14th century and Perpendicular in style. Another curious feature is the 16th century addition of a lean-to timber gallery built onto the southern wall of the nave which is believed to have been used as a meeting place and then the village school. Repairs were conducted to the chancel in the 17th century and a more thorough Victorian restoration in the mid 19th century to arrive at today's church. There is ample parking at the car park shared by church & inn, the gates give way to a shady path which runs for a couple of hundred metres, through trees, to the churchyard. Sadly that churchyard has many obstructing trees which severely limit the angles available to the photographer and make for a tricky subject to adequately capture.