Norwich St Paul, Norfolk Genealogy

Guide to Norwich St Paul, Norfolk ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
Norwich St Paul used to be an ancient medieval round tower church within the city of Norwich and diocese of Norwich.

"St. Margaret’s, in Fyebridge, was a church of ancient foundation, situated on the west side of Magdalen Street, near the gate. There is no account how long it has been dissolved. The parish is now [1869] united with St. Paul’s."

"W. H. Claxton in Record of Local Events in Norwcich, From 575 to 1904 gave its date of building as 'cica 1450.' A church had occupied the site for at least three centuries when the rebuilding took place. It had served not only the parish but also a monastic hospital for the poor and needy which had been established nearby during the first half of the twelfth century."

"In R. H. Mottram's book If Stones Could Speak he said that St Paul's Square was rebuilt by special Act of Parliament in the 1860s because the area had become 'dilapidated, verminous, disgraceful.' "More building improventment continued in various decades until, by 1920 the church was photographed. There are also surviving photographs from the 1930s.

It was gutted by fire from incendiary bombs "during the early hours of 27th of June 1942. For ten years it stood a roofless ruin until the remains were demolished" in the 1950s (despite pleas for the tower to be preserved) to form part of the City Ring Road and the Barrack Street roundabout. Today the corner of St Paul's churchyard is now a children's playground.

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

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.

This parish does not appear on FamilySearch Historical Records and the loading of images is a known issue awaiting engineering. A search of the FamilySearch Catalogue indicates that the following Parish Registers are on film but these have not yet been converted to digital images for publication.

Parish registers for St. Paul's Church, Norwich, 1614-1943 Norfolk Record Office reference PD73/1-2 Here is a list of church records on microfilm at the Family History Library(FHL) in Salt Lake City.

Non-Conformist Churches

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at FindMyPast ($), index and images (coverage may vary)
 * 1613-1901 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index (dates may vary by parish)

Census Records
FreeCen does not have Norfolk County census transcriptions for 1841 as of 7 Aug 2013.

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
 * Cassini Norwich Ordnance Survey Map (Incl 1838, 1898-1899, 1922 and present day). www.cassinimaps.com

Websites

 * White's 1883 Norwich Street Directory
 * Historic photographs of the church