St Margaret at Cliffe, Kent Genealogy

Guide to St Margaret at Cliffe, Kent ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
ST. MARGARET at Cliffe, a parish, in the union of Dover, hundred of Bewsborough, lathe of St. Augustine, E. division of Kent, 3½ miles NE from Dover.

St Margaret at Cliffe is a civil parish in the Dover district of Kent. See St Margaret-at-Cliffe Wikipedia which includes Nelson Bay and St Margaret's Bay.

The Ancient Parish of St Margaret of Antioch at Cliffe includes St Margaret's Bay; a map of the parish boundary is available at A church near you

The parish church is dedicated to St Margaret of Antioch. Established on a Saxon foundation by the Priors of Dover, who controlled the parish until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, and completed in 1150, it is of similar design to that in Creully in Calvados, Normandy, and built with Caen stone from that region with the integration of local split flint. As it is unusual for a small village to have such a large church it could be that the Benedictine monks used the church and surrounding village as a summer retreat.

"In the parish records there is an interesting account dated 1696 of a shepherd who, being lost one night, fell over the cliff and was mortally injured, but he lived long enough to bequeath to the parish five roods of land to pay for the tolling of a curfew bell at 8 p.m. from Michaelmas to Lady Day in order to warn travellers if they walked too near the edge of the cliff... Throughout the following centuries the villagers were concerned in smuggling. It is said that the church tower was used by a parish clerk to store the gear which was required to haul the contraband up the cliffs...." Extract from "St Margaret's Bay The Piccadilly of the Sea." This was originally written by J Harris Stone and published in 1910.

The Parish Church of St Margaret of Antioch, High Street, St Margaret-at-Cliffe has been designated as a grade I listed building British listed building

The benefice of St Margaret has further information benefice website and includes East Langdon, Kent West Langdon, Kent West Cliffe, Kent in the benefice.

See Edward Hasted, St Margaret at Cliffe, "The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent": Volume 9 (1800), pp. 412-418. Date accessed: 7 November 2013..

at British History Online and Kent Churches website

Civil Registration
See Dover Registration District

Kent County Council (KCC) has a certificate centre at the Mansion House in Tunbridge Wells which holds all the completed registers for Kent since 1 July 1837 and can supply a certified copy of any Kent birth, death or marriage entry from any register within its custody or a Kent civil partnership registration from the government online database.

The Mansion House (Certificate Centre) Grove Hill Road Tunbridge Wells Kent TN1 1EP

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
St Margaret at Cliffe parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Non-Conformists (All other Religions)

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at FindMyPast ($), index and images (coverage may vary)

Poor Law Unions

 * Dover Poor Law Union, Kent

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


 * See England, Kent, Wills and Probate - FamilySearch Historical Records

Local Family History Centre

 * Canterbury Family History Centre, Kent
 * Maidstone Family History Centre, Kent
 * FHC Portal This centre has access to the Family History Centre Portal page which gives free access in the centre to premium family history software and websites that generally charge for subscriptions.
 * Publication of the restricted access images England, Kent, Wills and Probate - FamilySearch Historical Records and England, Kent, Land Tax Assessments - FamilySearch Historical Records means that it is advisable to telephone the centre to reserve a computer if you wish to view these

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