Eltham St John the Baptist, Kent Genealogy

Guide to Eltham St John the Baptist, Kent ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish register transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
ELTHAM (St. John the Baptist), a parish, in the union of Lewisham, hundred of Blackheath, lathe of Sutton-At-Hone, W. division of Kent, 8½ miles (S. E. by S.) from London.

Eltham is a district in the London Borough of Greenwich Eltham Wikipedia

Eltham St John the Baptist is an Ancient Parish and market Town which included Mottingham within the parish boundary.

Eltham was a civil parish of Kent until 1889 when it became part of the County of London and from 1900 formed part of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich. The metropolitan borough was abolished in 1965 and Eltham then became part of the present-day London Borough of Greenwich.

There has been a succesion of churches on the site of the present church.

The church was rebuilt in 1668 after the 1667 collapse of the nave during building work to create a vault. That church was demolished and between 1872 and 1879 the present church was built and dedicated on the feast of St John the Baptist 24 June 1880.

The church of St John the Baptist has been designated as a grade C listed building British listed building

See Eltham North West Kent Family History Society for other places of worship and Eltham St John the Baptist and other Anglican parishes derived from this parish which include

Eltham Holy Trinity

Mottingham St Andrew See Mottingham North West Kent Family History Society for other places of Worship in Mottingham

New Eltham All Saints

Shooters Hill Northwest Kent Family History Society

Civil Registration
Mottingham is within Bromley Registration district

See Bexley Registration District

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
Eltham St John the Baptist 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 Eltham 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
See Lewisham 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