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, 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". At the time, Hadlow Down's residents were mostly poor: most people worked as farm labourers, and the early 19th century was a particularly difficult time. Nevertheless, Hall sought to raise funds as quickly as possible. He published a document detailing his case for the building of the church—principally that a rapidly growing population of about 700 was served by two churches more than away—and the funding requirements for building work (estimated at £1,800) and the
endowment for the vicar (suggested as £100 per year). He then listed the people and bankers who would be in charge of receiving donations—including himself,
the 3rd Earl of Liverpool (owner of nearby Buxted Park) and the Vicar of Mayfield—and included a list of all benefactions received so far, with names, place of residence and value: from the £100 subscriptions from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Vicars of Mayfield and Buxted and other prominent local figures to donations of five
shillings from local farmworkers. and
the 5th Earl De La Warr gave £200 worth of stone to build the walls. A local building firm constructed the church to the designs of William Moseley. He worked mainly in London, but also designed several
Gothic Revival churches in the north of Sussex—at
Forest Row, Holtye Common,
Horsham and
Uckfield. His design for St Mark's Church was based on that of Holy Trinity Church at Forest Row, which was being built at the same time. Moseley adopted a cost-saving technique in his design for the tower and spire—which ended up damaging the building— and finished in 1836, and Archbishop of Canterbury
William Howley consecrated the church on 6 May 1836 in front of 500 guests. A debt of about £400 remained at that time, and in 1837 the church faced another problem when
dry rot caused structural damage. In the same year, it became a
parish church when a parish was carved out of Buxted and Mayfield districts. Meanwhile, the Providence Chapel (also used by Baptists by this time) continued to thrive. By 1913, the church was in disrepair. Charles Lang Huggins , a relative of Benjamin Hall, paid for the building to be rebuilt to a design by architect
George Fellowes Prynne. Huggins supplied stone quarried from his own land at Hadlow Grange. Fellowes Prynne studied architecture in Canada and later worked with
George Edmund Street. He was responsible for St Wilfrid's Church at
Bognor Regis and the fittings (especially
reredoses) of many other churches in Sussex. There is uncertainty over how extensive his work at St Mark's Church was, and whether it can be considered a mere remodelling or a complete reconstruction. Charles Lang Huggins employed the Miller and Selmes firm of
Eastbourne to build the church. One of their workers added his mark on the spire by deliberately erecting the
weather vane upside down; he was sacked for this attempt at humour. observed that its "overgrown" state gave "the appearance of sad neglect", and proposed that grave mounds would be levelled, shrubbery would be removed and elaborate gravestones would no longer be permitted. The scheme was not successful, but over the ensuing decades an impressive range of wild flowers have grown in parts of the churchyard, which is now maintained as a nature reserve by the "Living Churchyard" conservation project. ==Architecture==