St Nicholas Hospital, Kent Genealogy

Guide to St Nicholas Hospital, Kent ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
At Harbledown the extra parochial area of St Nicholas Hospital grew from the foundation of the ancient St Nicholas Hospital. This was founded as a leper hospital to the west of Canterbury about 1084 by Archbishop Lanfranc. When leprosy disappeared from England the Hospital site was developed as alms housing.

See Victoria County History A History of the County of Kent: Volume 2 (1926), pp. 219-220 at British History Online and Kent Churches website

The Land Tax records make no reference to this part of Harbledown but refer to the parish Harbledown, Kent and Borough of Harbledown; see England, Kent, Land Tax Assessments - FamilySearch Historical Records

See also kent Resources website and Historic Canterbury website

Civil Registration
See Bridge Registration District

Kent County Council (KCC) has a certificate centre at the Mansion House in Tunbridge Wells which holds all the completed registers for Kent since 1 July 1837 and can supply a certified copy of any Kent birth, death or marriage entry from any register within its custody or a Kent civil partnership registration from the government online database.

The Mansion House (Certificate Centre) Grove Hill Road Tunbridge Wells Kent TN1 1EP

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 Nicholas Hospital 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.

Family History Library film number Family History Library BRITISH Film 1786506 Item 5

Bishop's Transcripts 1814-1892

Canterbury Cathedral Archives, The Precinct, Canterbury, Kent. Canterbury Cathedral Archives reference: DCb/BT2/135 Baptisms, 1841, 1847, 1849, 1892; Burials, 1814, 1816, 1818-1821, 1823, 1827-1828, 1830, 1832-1836, 1840-1841, 1843-1844, 1846, 1848, 1883-1891.

The records contain only baptisms and burials for the brothers and sisters of the hospital; there is no evidence of marriage and the chapel appears not to have been licensed ecclesiastically for this.

See also England, Kent, Parish Registers and Bishop's Transcripts (FamilySearch Historical Records) for St Nicholas Hospital Bishop's Transcripts.

From Spring 2012 material formerly held at Centre for Kentish Studies, County Hall, Maidstone, Kent ME14 1XX is available at Kent History and Library Centre see Kent Archives which also enables a search of the catalogue for Kent Archives material deposited at Canterbury Cathedral Archives

Census Records
FamilySearch Records includes collections of census indexes which can be searched online for free. In addition, 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

 * Bridge 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.


 * See England, Kent, Wills and Probate - FamilySearch Historical Records

Local Family History Centre

 * Canterbury Family History Centre, Kent
 * Maidstone Family History Centre, Kent
 * FHC Portal This centre has access to the Family History Centre Portal page which gives free access in the centre to premium family history software and websites that generally charge for subscriptions.
 * Publication of the restricted access images England, Kent, Wills and Probate - FamilySearch Historical Records and England, Kent, Land Tax Assessments - FamilySearch Historical Records means that it is advisable to telephone the centre to reserve a computer if you wish to view these

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