Lewisham St Mary, Kent Genealogy

Guide to Lewisham St Mary, Kent ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish register transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
LEWISHAM (St. Mary), a parish, and the head of a union, in the hundred of Blackheath, lathe of Sutton-at-Hone, W division of Kent, 6½ miles SE from London, on the road to Tonbridge.

Lewisham is a district and London Borough Lewisham Wikipedia Lewisham grew from settlement around the Parish Church of St Mary.

Lewisham St Mary was an Ancient Parish in the county of Kent. Other places in the parish include: Sydenham, Southend, Cockshed and Rushey Green.

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
Lewisham St Mary parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

IGI Batch Numbers



Non-Conformists (All other Religions)

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

Census Records
Census Returns for Lewisham 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

 * Lewisham 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.

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