Sandwich St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Kent Genealogy

Guide to Sandwich St Bartholomew's Hospital, Kent ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish register transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
Sandwich is a town and civil Parish, a Cinque Port within the Dover District of Kent, see also Sandwich Kent Wikipedia for a history of the town.

Sandwich St Bartholomew's Hospital was an extra parochial place within the town.

St. Bart's Hospital, as it is known locally, is one of the oldest established hostels for travellers and pilgrims, dating back possibly, to 1190.

The chapel for the "accommodation of pilgrims and travellers where they might be furnished with lodgings, provisions and other necessaries for their journey" on the site which it still occupies in Dover Road on the outskirts of the town, but it fairly soon became a Hospital providing a permanent home to sixteen brothers or sisters.

To begin with, the brethren lived in common, though they had separate rooms; now of course they have individual houses.

The Hospital chapel, built in 1217 as part of the original foundation, is still used for its original purpose by today's hospitalians.

The buildings on the site form part of a cluster of listed buildings. The St Bartholomew's Chapel, St Bart's Road Sandwich has been designated as a grade I listed building British listed building

See also 'Hospitals: Hospitals in Sandwich and Sevenoaks', A History of the County of Kent: Volume 2 (1926), pp. 226-227 [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=38241&amp;strquery=Sandwich at British History Online.

In addition Edward Hasted in his, "The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent": Volume 10 (1800), pp. 152-216. Date accessed: 30 September 2013. at British History Online refers to the 3 hospital foundations within the town's history.

See Kent Churches website for a 1917 image of the chapel.

Civil Registration
Eastry Registration District and Thanet 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
Sandwich St Bartholomew’s Hospital parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

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

Kent Online Parish Clerks has indexes available for select parishes. Records are also available at the Kent Archives.

St Bartholomew's Chapel is an extra parochial place and it is necessary to refer to other parishes in the town for ecclesiastical parish records such as parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts, non conformist and other types of church records, such as parish chest records.

Family History Library film numbers will bring records for the town of Sandwich generally.

Census Records
Census returns for Sandwich St Bartholomew 1841-1891

FamilySearch Records includes collections of census indexes which can be searched online for free. In addition FamilySearch Centres offer free access to images of the England and Wales Census through FHC Portal Computers here have access to the Family History Centre Portal page which gives free access to premium family history software and websites that generally charge for subscriptions.
 * Category:England Family History Centres to locate local Family History Centres in UK
 * Introduction to Family History Centers to locate outside UK.
 * Many archives and local history collections in public libraries in England and Wales offer online census searches and also hold microfilm or fiche census returns.

Images of the census for 1841-1891 can be viewed in census collections at Ancestry (fee payable) or Find My Past (fee payable)

The 1851 census of England and Wales attempted to identify religious places of worship in addition to the household survey census returns.


 * Ancestry UK Census Collection
 * Find my Past census search 1841-1901

Poor Law Unions

 * Eastry 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