Blakeney with Little Langham, Norfolk Genealogy

England Norfolk Norfolk Parishes

Parish History
Blakeney St Nicholas is an Ecclesisatical parish created in the 1600's from Blakeley Ancient Parish and Little Langham Ancient Parish. Other places in the parish include Little Langham and Snitterley and the parish is in the Holt deanery of the Diocese of Norwich. Blakeney is part of the Glaven Valley which also includes Wiveton, Cley, Glandford, Bayfield and Letheringsett.

BLAKENEY (St. Nicholas, St. Mary, and St. Thomas the Apostle), a small sea-port, post-town, and parish, in the union of Walsingham, hundred of Holt, W. division of Norfolk, 26 miles (N. N. W.) from Norwich, and 134 (N. E.) from London. By 1845 the Wesleyans had a place of worship, by 1854 the Primitive Methodists were here, and later the Catholics returned to form Our Lady and St Peter (having lost St. Nicholas anciently to the Angelicans). "St Peter is very close to the medieval church of St Nicholas, which was of course in the care of the Catholic Church until the Anglicans took it over in the 16th century.".

In the 1200s, Henry III, granted Blakeney a market.

In 1295 "William, Lord de Roos, 2nd Baron Roos of Helmsley, obtained the King's consent to give to the Carmelites" to build the Blakeney Friary. "The original Carmelites, or White Friars, were followers of crusaders who had gone to Palestine from Europe. They settled on Mount Carmel which is near the modern port of Haifa. Carmel is the holy mountain where Elijah confronted the prophets of baal." In 1241 a group of Carmelites sailed to Lynn, England. "The de Roos family often sailed from Blakeney Haven to Boston," a port in Lincolnshire "because they had estates in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. [Immigrants from Boston, Lincolnshire settled Boston, Mass.]

Perhaps the brightest student of the Blakeney Friary was John de Basconsthorpe who was born in the 1200s as the third son of Sir Thomas Bacon of Baconsthorpe, near Holt. A prolific author of more than 100 books, John de Basconthorpe's "writings were used in preparing the case for King Henry VIII's divorce. John de Baconsthorpe died in London in 1346."

1435 - the south-west buttress of the church tower was built.

1516 - "The Blakeney Guild was given the monopoly of supplying fish to a number of religious houses, including the Abbeys of Binham and Walsingham. The requirement of salt, to preserve fish, was so great that ships had to go to Spain to obtain sufficient."

1558/1603 "..in Elizabethan times the Astleys of Melton were also lords of Blakeney, Glandford and Langham, which they sold to the Calthorpe family."

1820 Enclosure Act, 1820. Blakeney, Wiveton, Glandford. (Available Norfolk Public Library Control No. NL00019920.)

1845 - By now most of the 988 acres of land belonging to Blakeney was owned by Lord Calthorpe.

For further reading, see the bibliography list at GenUKI's "Norfolk: Blakeney - Church History" and also Blakeney Area Historical Society's serial The Glaven Historian-- many of the earlier issues are online.

Resources
If you live in Norfolk or near Blakeney then you will have access to a variety of resources; however, for those who live further afield, one can access online records at FamilySearch and other sites mentioned on this page. Additional records (microfilm and online) can be viewed at Family History Centers. Refer to and  in the Family History Library Catalog for available records.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.


 * Walsingham 1837-1938
 * Fakenham 1939-1974
 * The Register Office, Fakenham Connect, Oak Street, Fakenham, NR21 9SR. Tel: 01328 850111. E-mail: [mailto:registration.fakenham@norfolk.gov.uk registration.fakenham@norfolk.gov.uk]

Church records
parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Images of the Blakeney parish registers are included in and may be viewed online in FamilySearch's "England, Norfolk, Parish Registers (County Record Office), 1538-1900" collection. It is not known if the 6 included Blakeney collections are also represented in the index to this collection.


 * One of the Blakeney collections within "England, Norfolk, Parish Registers (County Record Office), 1538-1900" collection is a collection entitled “Blakeney, Baptism, Marraiges, Burials, 1729-1791.” This collection has 70 images. Images 3-32 contain baptisms for the years 1729-1784. Images 32-35 contain marriages for the years 1729-1754 (with the years 1743, 1745 and 1748 either having no marriages, or marraiges not recorded). Image 36 starts up with 1785 baptisms. Image 44 has 1790 baptisms and then starts in with burials for the year 1729.

Norfolk Record Office reference PD 619

Census records


Manorial Records

 * Manorial Records of London, Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex. Contains copies and abstracts of various records relating to manors and lands of Sir Henry Calthorpe. Includes the following manors and lands: Stiffkey, Wiveton, Blakeney, etc. FHL British FIlm 1471770 item 28.

Poor Law Unions
For more information on the history of the workhouse, see Peter Higginbotham's web site: www.workhouses.org.uk and http://www.workhouses.org.uk/index.html?Walsingham/Walsingham.shtml

Walsingham Union was incorporated under the terms of the 1834 Act, and the union workhouse was built at Great Snoring, but not completed until 1838. The Walsingham Union Workhouse at Great Snoring was opened in 1838. It was situated close to the boundary between the parishes of Great Snoring and Thursford and was sometimes known as Thursford Workhouse. Poor Law Unions were abolished in 1930 and the responsibilities of Walsingham Union Board of Guardians were taken over by Norfolk County Council Guardians' Committee No. 7. From 1930 the former Workhouse became known as Walsingham Public Assistance Institution. On 26 and 27 June 1934 the remaining thirty inmates (including two infants but no children) were transferred to West Beckham and Gressenhall Institutions and Walsingham Institution officially closed on 30 June 1934. The building was subsequently adapted for use as a smallpox hospital. By 1976 the building was derelict and was demolished in the early 1990s. Acquisition Received by the Norfolk Record Office on 26 February 1982 (C/GP 19/192-198) and on unknown dates.

Copies C/GP19/1-6, 131, 133-135, 137, 141, 143-146, 148, 150-151, 173-181 are on microfilm. RelatedMaterial For records of Guardians Committee No. 7 (including the administration of Red House Children's Home in Little Snoring and the boarding-out of children), see C/GC 7. See Public Assistance Sub-Committee minutes, 11 July 1934 and 12 September 1934, C/C 10/455. The records of the County Architect's Department include plans of the alterations for use as a smallpox hospital dated February 1937, see C/AR 1/29-31. The one inch to one mile Ordnance Survey Map of 1954 designates the building 'smallpox hospital'.

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Norfolk Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Websites

 * Blakeney on GenUKI
 * Blakeney Glaven Valley Benefice