St Breock, Cornwall Genealogy

Guide to St Breock, Cornwall ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
BREOCK, ST. (St. Breoke), a parish, in the union of St. Columb Major, hundred of Pyder, E. division of Cornwall, 1 mile WSW from Wadebridge. There are a chapel of ease at Wadebridge; and places of worship in the parish for Independents, Wesleyans, and Bryanites.

St. Breock, also St. Breoke (Cornish: Nanssans) St Briocus is an Ancient Parish and dates back to the 13th century although it was extensively rebuilt in 1677.

The church has a battlemented tower with a ring of five bells. It is situated beside the stream in the valley bottom and in 1965 suffered damage in a major flood. The nave is longer than usual in a parish church: this may be connected to the fact that the Bishops of Exeter owned the manor of Pawton before the Reformation and had a palace there. The church contains some fine monuments to members of the Tredeneck family and one of 1598 to one of the Prideaux-Brunes. There is a brass probably also to a Tredeneck, ca. 1520.

Civil Registration
Births, 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 Free BMD.

Church records
St Breock 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 Cornwall Record Office.

Cornwall Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource is the Cornwall Online Parish Clerks page for the parish.

Census records
Cornwall Online Census Project

Poor Law Unions
St Columb Major Poor Law Union

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Cornwall 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
There are many maps and gazetteers showing English places. Valuable websites are:


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Websites
St Breoke in GENUKI