Parish Registers

The Abinger Parish registers are retained in a purpose-built database written by Philip Rawlings.

• Burial register 1559 - 1812
• Burial Register 1813 -1846
• Burial register 1877-2015
• Baptism register 1559-1812
• Inscriptions and Graves in Abinger Church and Churchyard, transcribed by John A Gibbs 1933 as recorded in 1934
• Surrey Manning & Bray, vol II(1809)
• Epitaphs of Surrey, A B Bax, ms. in Surrey Archeological Society Library (1890)

Reports

Reports from that database are shown below, other sorts/selections are available from the webmaster.

• Burial registers 1559-2015 sorted by burial date
• Complete registers 1559-2015 sorted by name
• Statistics from the registers
• Records of graves with visible markers and/or recorded inscriptions
• Plot of the churchyard graves (in progress)

Burial Register 1877-2015

• Scan of burial register 1877-2018 (.PDF)

Burial Register 1813-1846

The original Abinger Parish burial registers for 1813-1846 were lost, but were earlier published, a scan is shown here.

• Scan of published burial register 1813-1846 (.PDF)

Burial Register 1599-1812

The Abinger Parish burial registers for 1599-1812 were published as The Parish Registers of Abinger, Wotton, and Oakwood Chapel, Co. Surrey (Mitchell Hughes & Clarke, London, 1928), a scan is shown here.

• Scan of published burial register 1599-1812 (.PDF)

Notes to the Registers

• The registers from 1812-1887 are lost. Some inscriptions were transcribed by John A Gibbs in "Inscriptions and Graves in Abinger Church and Churchyard with Index" presented to St James' in 1934 Also from "Epitaphs of Surrey", A B Bax, ms. in Surrey Archeological Society Library (1890); these data are included in the currenet database
• 'Affidavit': in The Burial in Woolen Acts of 1660-1689 "No corps should be buried in anything other than what is made of sheep's wool only; or put into any coffin lined or faced with any material but sheep's wool, on pain of forfeiture of £5." Excepting plague victims and the destitute. In addition, an affidavit to that effect was required not later than 8 days after the burial. The act was repealed in 1814 but ignored after 1770.
• 'Certificate': a certificate brought (presented) affirming burial in 'woolen'. * Assumed, except otherwise stated, that a woman takes the surname of the husband (often burial register has only, for example, Joan the wife of John Smith).
• Assumed, except otherwise stated, that a child takes the surname of the father (often burial register has only, for example, Jane the daughter of John Smith).
• Spellings of names and places are idiosyncratic in the registers. As far as practicable, original spellings have been retained.
• Names are often prefixed with Goodman or Goodwife (abbr. Goody) in the earlier registers. Archaic form, known from 13th to mid-18th century. Signifies lower social standing than those addressed as Mr, Mrs, Mistress.

Source Data

You can download (StJamesRegisters.xml) the entire registers dataset. Then open the XML file as an XML table, or in any XML-friendly application.