St Mark's Church, Hadlow Down

St Mark's Church
Church of St Mark the Evangelist
The church from the southeast
50°59′48″N 0°10′43″E / 50.9967°N 0.1787°E / 50.9967; 0.1787Coordinates: 50°59′48″N 0°10′43″E / 50.9967°N 0.1787°E / 50.9967; 0.1787
Location	Main Road, Hadlow Down, East Sussex TN22 4HY
Country	United Kingdom
Denomination	Church of England
Churchmanship	Modern Catholic
History
Founded	1834
Founder(s)	Benjamin Hall
Dedication	Mark the Evangelist
Consecrated	6 May 1836
Architecture
Status	Parish church
Functional status	Active
Heritage designation	Grade II
Designated	31 December 1982
Architect(s)	William Moseley (1834 building); George Fellowes Prynne (1913 rebuilding)
Style	Perpendicular Gothic Revival
Completed	1836
Administration
Parish	Buxted and Hadlow Down
Deanery	Rural Deanery of Uckfield
Archdeaconry	Lewes and Hastings
Diocese	Chichester
Province	Canterbury
Clergy
Vicar(s)	Revd Dr John Barker

St Mark's Church (dedicated in full to St Mark the Evangelist) is an Anglican church in the village of Hadlow Down in the district of Wealden, one of six local government districts in the English county of East Sussex. Founded in 1834 by a committed local resident who petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury for permission to establish a chapel in the poor agricultural village, the church proved popular—despite the competing presence of two Nonconformist chapels nearby—and was extended in 1913. The stone-built church, with its tall spire and well-regarded "living churchyard" nature reserve, is now Hadlow Down's only remaining place of worship. English Heritage has listed it at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.

Hadlow Down's name suggests that a settlement existed in Saxon times: it was first recorded as Headda's leah, a forest clearing (leah in Anglo-Saxon) governed by Headda. "Down" was appended in the 14th century to describe the hilly nature of the land, and the present name emerged by the early 19th century, when the present linear village began to develop.

The village straddled the boundary of two large rural parishes, Buxted and Mayfield, and was nominally served by those villages' churches—St Margaret the Queen's Church and St Dunstan's Church respectively. These were both more than three miles away, and the owner of Buxted Lodge (a large house in Hadlow Down), Benjamin Hall, was concerned about the number of villagers who could not attend church. Furthermore, a Nonconformist place of worship—the Providence Chapel—had been founded in the centre of the village in 1824, potentially attracting people away from the Church of England's ministry. In 1834, he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Howley, seeking permission and funds to build a church in the village—adding that "very many poor children [were] wandering about the lanes in ignorance of almost every duty, moral or religious". The Archbishop supported Hall's idea, but advised that money would be limited—although within a few months, the reforms instituted by the Ecclesiastical Duties and Revenue Commission led to initiatives such as the founding of the Society for Building Churches and Chapels, whose purpose was to provide funds to establish new churches.