Oxnead, Norfolk Genealogy

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

Parish History
OXNEAD (St. Nicholas), a parish, in the union of Aylsham, hundred of South Erpingham, E. division of Norfolk, 4 miles (S. E.) from Aylsham.

Oxnead St Michael is an Ancient Parish in the Diocese of Norwich.

Oxnead is named for its site on meadows beside a river known to the Britons and Saxons as the Ouse. At the time of the Domesday survey, the estate belonged to Halden and altogether was worth 30 shillings. It was seven furlongs long and six broad and included a church with twenty-four acres of glebe land. At the time of King Stephen, Oxnead belonged to Albert Greslei, from whom it passed to the Hauteyn family. Around 1368, the estate was acquired by Sir Robert de Salle. After Sir Robert’s death, his widow’s second husband, Sir William Clopton, took control of Oxnead and in the 1420s it was sold to William Paston, of Paston.

The church is mostly thirteenth-century and built of flint with stone dressings. However, there are several later additions in brick, dating from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, such as the top of the tower, two porches and a stepped east gable.

Inside, there is a monument to Sir Clement Paston (1515-1597). This is a tomb-chest featuring his recumbent effigy and a kneeing figure of his wife, Lady Alice. There is also a monument to Lady Katherine Paston, wife of Sir William (1610-1663), who died in childbirth in 1637. This work is by the celebrated Jacobean sculptor Nicholas Stone. The church also includes a seventeenth century font.

Onead is now a lost settlement in Norfolk, England, roughly three miles south-east of Aylsham. It now consists mostly of St Michael’s Church and Oxnead Hall. It was the principal residence of the Paston family from 1597 until the death of William Paston, 2nd Earl of Yarmouth in 1732. Under Sir William Paston (1610-1663), Oxnead was the site of several works by the architect and sculptor, Nicholas Stone, master-mason to Kings James I and Charles I.

The church survives detached and isolated from parishioners in a rural setting

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.


 * Aylsham 1837-1938
 * Norwich Outer 1939-1974
 * Norwich

Church records
Oxnead 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 Norfolk Record Office.

Genealogy From Periodicals
Curties. E.A. The Curties Family of Norfolk. History and family tree of Robert Curtes and Prudence Gascoyne, with the following surnames, Barker, Boldney, Leman, Creasey, Doughty, Parker, Paul, Titsell, Smith, Topps, Hutton, Lake, Howard, Summere, Sturt, Bailey, Loynes, Mattewson, Rook. There is a descripiton of each of the family and their life, in many Norfolk Parishes. Brampton, Irstead, Oxnead, Aylsham, Sidestand, Scottow, Trimingham, North Walsham, and Swofield. Article dates are 1556-1945, and is found in The Norfok Ancestor, old series, vol. 2,pt2 page 17-22, Family History Library Ref. 942.61 B2j old series, v2. pt. 2

Poor Law Unions
Aylsham Poor Law Union

Norfolk Poor Law Unions

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.

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

Websites

 * Norfolk: Oxnead on GenUKI
 * Oxnead St Michael All Angels on A Church Near You
 * Oxnead on Literary Norfolk
 * British History Online
 * Oxnead on Norfolk Churches