Stiffkey, Norfolk Genealogy

England   Norfolk   Norfolk Parishes

Parish History
STIFFKEY (St. John), a parish, in the union of Walsingham, hundred of North Greenhoe, W. division of Norfolk, 3½ miles (E.) from Wells.

Stiffkey St John the Baptist is an Ancient parish in the Walsingham deanery of the Diocese of Norwich.

Stiffkey would have remained an obscure Norfolk parish were it not for the appointment of the Reverend Harold Francis Davidson as Rector in 1906. Davidson, who came from a long line of clerics, was appointed the Rector of Stiffkey in 1906. Despite his commitments to his parishioners, Davidson felt that he should also minister to ‘fallen women’ and spent much of his time on the streets of Soho, in London. He would regularly take the train from Wells Next the Sea to London, returning just in time to take Sunday worship in Stiffkey. His wife became pregnant by another man while he was serving in the First World War, and this led to him spending even more time in London.

Some of his parishioners began to resent the amount of time he was spending away from Stiffkey, and the situation came to a head one Sunday in November 1930. Davidson was delayed in London and arrived in Stiffkey too late to take the Remembrance Day services. This was the final straw for Major Hammond, a Church Warden, who reported Davidson to the Bishop of Norwich for his “immoral” behaviour. The Bishop launched an investigation and found that the overwhelming majority of the people of Stiffkey, and street girls of London, had nothing but praise for the Rector. Despite this, he was put on trial in March 1932 on charges of ‘systematically misbehaving’ himself with young women. The trial lasted over three months and created front page headlines. The case has been described as “Britain’s first sex scandal” and the publicity helped make Davidson a household name and national celebrity. At his trial, Davidson denied the charges against him, but in July 1932 he was found guilty on all counts. He was formally defrocked from the clergy at Norwich Cathedral in October 1932

Davidson claimed that the charges were an establishment conspiracy against him, and there are still people including most residents of Stiffkey and his own grandchildren who support this theory.

After he was defrocked Davidson he moved to Blackpool where holidaymakers queued to see him sitting on a barrel protesting his innocence; and paying two pence each for the privilege. He unsuccessfully applied to become the manager of Blackpool Football Club, and is rumored to have founded a naturist colony.

Later, he moved to the East Coast at Skegness. Here he embarked on the act that would cost him his life. He recreated the Biblical story of Daniel by praying and preaching from inside a lions’ cage. One day in July 1938, a lion turned on him and took him round the cage by the scruff of the neck. The audience laughed and cheered; unaware that what they were witnessing was not part of the act. The injuries proved fatal and he died a few days after the mauling.

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.


 * Walsingham 1837-1938
 * Fakenham 1939-1974

The Register Office, Fakenham Connect, Oak Street, Fakenham, NR21 9SR. Tel: 01328 850111. E-mail: registration.fakenham@norfolk.gov.uk

Church records
parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Norfolk Record Office reference PD 492/1-7

Abstracts of Stiffkey Parish Register Baptism

Abstracts of Stiffkey Parish Register Banns

Abstracts of Stiffkey Parish Register Marriages

Abstracts of Stiffkey Parish Register Burials

Abstracts of Stiffkey Parish Register Baptisms and Stiffkey Bishop's Transcripts [Baptisms]

Census records
http://www.btinternet.com/~e.c.apling/1891Census/Stiffkey.htm transcript of 1891 census

Manorial Records

 * Manorial Records of London, Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex. Contains copies and abstracts of various records relating to manors and lands of Sir Henry Calthorpe. Includes the following manors and lands: Stiffkey, Wiveton, Blakeney, etc. FHL British FIlm 1471770 item 28.

Poor Law Unions
For more information on the history of the workhouse, see Peter Higginbotham's web site: www.workhouses.org.uk and http://www.workhouses.org.uk/index.html?Walsingham/Walsingham.shtml

Walsingham 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

Web sites
http://www.northnorfolkcentral.co.uk/balestiffkey/stiffkey/stiffkeyenter.htm Stiffkey benefice website

http://www.northnorfolkimages.co.uk/location/stiffkey.html for images of the church http://www.flickr.com/photos/barryslemmings/sets/72157594325609133/

http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/stiffkey/stiffkey.htm Norfolk Churches website

http://www.cvma.ac.uk/publications/digital/norfolk/sites/stiffkey/sources.html stained glass

http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-223424-church-of-st-john-the-baptist-stiffkey British Listed Buildings

http://norfolkcoast.co.uk/churches/ch_stiffkey.htm for information about the parish

http://www.literarynorfolk.co.uk/stiffkey.htm Literary Norfolk

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-rector-of-stiffkey-britains-most-infamous-clergyman-446456.html for book review about the infamous Rector of Stiffkey