Cooling, Kent Genealogy

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

Parish History
COOLING (St. James), a parish, in the union of Hoo, hundred of Shamwell, lathe of Aylesford, W. division of Kent, 6 miles (N. by E.) from Rochester.

Cooling St James is a redundant Anglican church on the Hoo peninsula in the Medway district of Kent and was an Ancient Parish.

The church is designated a grade I listed building by English Heritage and dates from 13th-15th century with 19th century restoration.British Listed Building

The church is now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust and open to visitors; the churchyard contains a group of children's graves which are widely believed to have inspired Charles Dickens description of the church yard in the opening of Great Expectations.St James Church Cooling Wikipedia and Churches Conservation Trust

Civil Registration
This parish was part of Hoo sub district Chatham Registration District

and registrations from July 1837 to the present day are held at

Medway district The Register Office Northgate Rochester ME1 1LS Telephone 01634 338902 Fax 01634 338913 register.office@medway.gov.uk

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
Cooling 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.

Kent Online Parish Clerks has indexes available for select parishes. Records are also available at the Kent Archives.

Census records
Census Returns for Cooling 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
Hoo 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

Websites
Cooling on GENUKI