Guston, Kent Genealogy

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

Parish History
GUSTON (St. Martin), a parish, in the union of Dover, hundred of Bewsborough, lathe of St. Augustine, E. division of Kent, 2 miles (N. by E.) from Dover. There is a small place of worship for dissenters.

Guston is a village and civil parish in the Dover district of Kent, see Guston Wikipedia

Guston St Martin of Tours is an Ancient Parish in the Diocese of Canterbury and includes the campus of the Duke of York's Military school near Martin Mill.

The church stands on the site of a Saxon church and dates from the 12th century when it was chapel to the priory of St Martin in Dover (now incorporated into Dover College).The church of St martin of Tours has been designated as a grade II* listed building British listed building

See Edward Hasted The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: Volume 9 (1800), pp. 405-409 at British History Online and Kent Churches website

Civil Registration
See Dover 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
Guston 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.

Burials in the parish churchyard include children from the nearby Duke of York's Royal Military School (a boarding school). The children would have succumbed to childhood illness and disease. Eleven burials are lined up either side of a memorial cross inscribed: "In Loving Memory of Boys of the Duke of York's Royal Military School. Sons of the Brave, may all be gathered, Bravest of all, at last to thee! O Lord, with all thy faithful soldiers, Give us the Palm of Victory!" The last two sentences are taken from the school's hymn. The youngest "Dukie" interred at Guston Church was "Sergeant Monitor P V Barnett, who was 14 years and 6 months when he died on 11th July 1914".

Poor Law Unions
Dover 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