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 1877-2011 (.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." 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 The act was repealed in 1814 but ignored after 1770.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 view the entire data by right-clicking on this link StJamesRegisters.xml and select 'Save target as' (depending on your browser). Then open the XML file as an XML table, or in any XML-friendly application.