St Katherine by the Tower, Middlesex Genealogy

Parish History
St Katharine's by the Tower—full name Royal Hospital and Collegiate Church of St. Katharine by the Tower—was a medieval church and hospital next to the Tower of London. The establishment was founded in 1147[1] and the buildings demolished in 1825 to build St Katharine Docks, which takes its name from it. However it was reestablished elsewhere in London and 123 years later returned once more to the East End. The church was a Royal Peculiar and the precinct around it was an extra-parochial area, eventually becoming a civil parish that was dissolved in 1895. St Katharine's by the Tower was grouped into the Whitechapel District in 1855 and became a civil parish in 1866 when its extra-parochial status ended, following the Poor Law Amendment Act 1866. The parish became part of the County of London in 1889. In 1895 it was abolished as a parish and combined with St Botolph without Aldgate.

Additional information:

St Catherine's or Katherine's Church is an ancient parish from at least 1584, with a Hospital, standing near Tower Hill, [was]..taken down to make room for the [St Catherine's [D]ocks, and was rebuilt in Regent's Park in St Marylebone Parish.

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
St Katherine by the Tower 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.

Records are also available at the London Metropolitan Archives.

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Middlesex 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