Norwich St Benedict, Norfolk Genealogy

England Norfolk  Norwich St Benedict

Parish History
Norwich St Benedict was one of the four mediaevalparish churches on St Benedict Street in the city. All of them are redundant now; St Laurence is one of Norwich's biggest, St Gregory probably its most interesting, St Margaret is used for exhibitions and St Swithin is the excellent Norwich Arts Centre. But it is the most westerly, St Benedict, which gives the street its name.

It once gave its name to a gate in the city walls, the remains of these are still visible at the end of St Benedict's street.

The church was destroyed one night in January 1942 as part of the German Baedecker bombing raid upon the city. The area beyond the street to the west was carpet-bombed by German planes, and the parish was almost entirely destroyed. All that remained of St Benedict was the shell of the aisle and the ancient round tower, standing tall and defiant. The ruined walls were removed in the 1950's and the tower alone hints at the presence of the church in an open grassed space between surrounding buildings. St Benedict Street is a busy restauarant and bare quarter of modern Norwich.

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.

Registration Districts

 * Norwich
 * registration events post 1837 may be searched online at Free BMD

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

To find the names of the neighbouring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Images of the parish register are available on Family Search In addition the Family History Library Catalog lists the following transcript for the parish Parish register transcripts, 1607-1812. St. Benedict's Church (Norwich, Norfolk)

Here is a list of church records on microfilm at the Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City.

Census records
Prior to the 1911 census the household schedule was destroyed and only the enumerator's schedule survives.

The 1911 census of England and Wales was taken on the night of Sunday 2 April 1911 and in addition to households and institutions such as prisons and workhouses, canal boats merchant ships and naval vessels it attempted to include homeless persons. The schedule was completed by an individual and for the first time both this record and the enumerator's schedule were preserved. Two forms of boycott of the census by women are possible due to frustration at government failure to grant women the universal right to vote in parliamentary and local elections. The schedule either records a protest by failure to complete the form in respect of the women in the household or women are absent due to organisation of groups of women staying away from home for the whole night. Research estimates that several thousand women are not found by census search. Find my Past 1911 census search

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.

Poor Law Unions
Norwich Poor Law Union

See also England Norfolk Poor Law Union Records (FamilySearch Historical Records)

Norfolk Poor Law Unions

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

Web sites
Norwich Historic Churches Trust http://www.norwich-churches.org/index.asp

http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk for historic photographs of the church