England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Dallington St Giles

The Parish

The parish of Dallington lies in eastern Sussex roughly 8 miles northeast of the small market town of Hailsham. Dallington sits a quarter of a miles south of the B2096 road which links Heathfield with Battle and is a rather small and compact village largely built around a 3-way junction of lanes with extensions onto the B2096 at Carrick's Hill and Wood's Corner. Today Dallington is a rural and peaceful village but it was not always so, this area of The Weald abounded in rich iron ore deposits and, difficult as it is to believe, this peaceful rural area once resounded to the road of blast furnaces all now gone. The soils of The Weald are rather poor so land developed a mixture of both pastoral fields and woodland management with coppicing for products such as poles, besoms and wattle. Dallington is drained northwards by headwaters of the River Dudwell which turns northeast to meet the Rother near Etchingham before finding a gap through the chalk ridge of the South Downs to meet the English Channel through the port of Rye. The B2096 follows a distinct ridge within The Weald and whilst Dallington church stands at 130 metres, Wood's Corner is some 40 metres higher in rolling countryside where there is no higher ground until the South Downs are met many miles to the south. At just under 2,900 acres Dallington parish was quite large, a side-effect of the region's poor soils where more acreage was required to maintain the population, that population was around 600 parishioners. In Domesday times Dallington was a very tiny place held by Count Robert of Eu it could only muster a single plough and 2 cottages.

The Church

St Giles' church sits on the eastern side of Dallington's main north to south running lane, behind fronting properties and opposite its only junction. The church is one which has largely been rebuilt in Victorian times, little remains of the original medieval church which was described by early gazetteers as "a handsome structure in the later English style, with a square embattled tower surmounted by a spire". Only that square tower and its spire are genuinely medieval and here the late Perpendicular style is present of the late 14th or probably 15th century. The remainder of the church was rebuilt in 1864 so would not be recognisable to those participants in these marriages. The result was clearly of little architectural interest for Pevsner as his account is a terse 3 lines of text. The main street of the village, bedecked with pretty timber-framed buildings, is rather narrow so careful parking is required, a narrow triangular green is flanked by twin pathways leading between properties to the entrance gates, once within the main aspects beloved by photographers are readily available.