Rotherhithe St Mary, Surrey Genealogy

England   Surrey

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Here is a Comprehensive List of Chapels and District Churches within Rotherhithe St Mary.

Parish History
ROTHERHITHE popularly Redriffa parish and a district on the N border of Surrey. The parish lies on the river Thames, between the Pool and Limehouse reach, on the East London railway, on the South London line of the London and Brighton railway, adjacent to the London and Greenwich railway, and on the terminalportion of the Surrey canal, 2¼ miles S E of St. Paul's, London; forms part of Southwark borough and of the metropolis; has a station with telegraph on the South London railway, and post-offices‡ under London S E; grew to importance around an ancient village in a marsh; was the place where Henry IV. stayed to be cured of hisleprosy; suffered destruction of more than 200 houses by a fire in 1765; numbers among its natives Admiral Benbow, Admiral Sir J. Leake, and the singer Dignum; consists all of low flat ground, originally marshy; comprisesabout 2½ miles of river and wharf frontage; contains the Surrey canal docks, the Greenland and Commercial docks, the East Country dock, numerous ship-building yards, boat-builders' and lighter-builders' wharves, timber-basins, ordnance wharves, a mast-yard, iron-works, white-lead and saltpetre works, and many establishments ofother kinds connected with commerce and manufacture; includes, in the S E, a considerable extent of market-gardens; is, in almost all its street portions, meanlybuilt, and inhabited chiefly by sailors and working men; was ecclesiastically, as well as politically, one parish till1840; and is now ecclesiastically cut into the four sections of St. Mary, Trinity, Christchurch, and All Saints. Acres, 886; of which 137 are water. Real property, £124, 710; of which £16, 337 are in the canal, and £11, 722in gas-works. Pop. in 1851, 17, 805; in 1861, 24, 502. Houses, 3, 521. The living of St. Mary is a rectory, united with the chapelry of St. Paul-Globe-street, and the other three livings are p. curacies, in the diocese of Winchester. Value of St. Mary, with St. Paul, £772; *of Trinity, £266; * of Christchurch, £330; * of All Saints, £310.* Patron of St. Mary, Clare College, Cambridge; of Trinity and All Saints, the Rector of Rotherhithe: of Christchurch, Hyndman's Trustees. St. Mary's church was built in 1715; is a brick structure; and contains aportrait of Charles I. and a monument of Prince Le Boo. The five churches aggregately contain 4, 420 sittings; and there are an Independent chapel, two Wesleyan chapels, and a Free Methodist chapel, with respectively 200, 725, and 170 sittings. The schools, in 1851, were 8 publicday schools, with 1, 192 scholars; 53 private day schools, with 1,063 s.; 7 Sunday schools, with 986 s.; and 2evening schools for adults, with 55 s. There are widows'alms-houses with £190 a year, and other charities £152. The district is conterminate with the parish. Poor-rates in 1863, £14, 486. Marriages in 1863, 60; births, 857, of which 21 were illegitimate; deaths, 609, of which 275 were at ages under 5 years, and 12 at ages above 85. Marriages in the ten years 1851-60, 1, 160; births, 7, 461; deaths, 5,037. The workhouse, at the census of 1861, had 207 inmates. See London.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72)


 * Beck, Edward Josselyn. Memorials to Serve for a History of the Parish of St Mary, Rotherhithe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907. Digital version at Google Books.

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.

Church records
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Census records
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Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Surrey 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
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 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Web sites
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