England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Twineham St Peter

The Parish

The parish of twineham lies in central Sussex, in the heart of The Weald, and about 4 miles west of the new town of Burgess Hill. Twineham sits, in lanes, about a mile west of the a23 road which connects London with Brighton. There is very little to modern day Twineham, a mere scatter of farms and cottages across a broad area and with no real defined village as such. Modern Twineham parish is perhaps most famous, today, for the nearby Show Jumping course of Hickstead which hamlet has a presence on the A23 and which draws crowds every event for its display of horsemanship. At the time of this transcript, and indeed still, Twineham would have been a small farming community, situated between two branches of the River Adur it would have benefited from extensive water meadows for pasture as well as engaging in typical arable crops. The Adur drains the parish westwards turning south to reach the English Channel through the port of Shoreham. Twineham is sited at just 10 metres above the sea in gentle terrain, land rises northwards gently to reach around 60 metres. Twineham parish was fairly small by Sussex standards, covering just over 1,900 acres it would have supported a population of around 350 parishioners. In Domesday times Twineham was recorded under the manor of Benefield, a property of William de Warenne, a small place of 5 ploughs and the usual meadows & woodland.

The Church

St Peter's church sits at the end of the dead-end Church Lane which runs westward from Twineham's notional centre for almost a quarter of a mile. The church has a date which is scarce in English churches having been largely constructed during the Tudor period which succeeded the Perpendicular major church building era. These were turbulent times coming immediately after the Wars of the Roses and before the Reformation and abandonment of Catholicism and was a rare period for church building. Entirely built of brick due to local shortage of building stone, the church follows the standard pattern of nave, chancel (slightly lower) and western tower, in this case augmented only by a timber southern porch. Whilst unusual in its era there was clearly little to draw Pevsner's attention as his account is limited to a handful of lines. Church Lane ends in a small parking area and from here the church is a short walk away through a dense covert of trees, the church sits within a relatively small churchyard making for a challenge to adequately capture it.