Shoreditch St Leonard Middlesex Family History Guide

Shoreditch St Leonard is an Ancient Parish in the county of Middlesex.

Alternative names: St Leonard Shoreditch

Other places in the parish include: Holywell and Moorfields.

Parish church:

Parish registers begin:

Parish registers: 1558
Bishop’s Transcripts: 1807

Nonconformists include: Baptist, Bible Christian Methodist, Calvinistic Methodist, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, French Protestant, General Baptist, Independent/Congregational, Methodist New Connexion, Plymouth Brethren, Protestant Dissenters, Wesleyan Methodist, and Wesleyan Methodist Association.

Table of Contents

Adjacent Parishes

Parish History

The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870

SHOREDITCH, a quondam village, a parish, and a district, in Middlesex. The quondam village occupied the site of the present Shoreditch-High-street, in the E part of the metropolis, 1½ mile NE of St. Paul’s.

It stood on the Roman road from London-wall to the ford at Hackney; is proved, by recently discovered traces of a Roman camp, to have been at least temporarily settled by the Romans; was long held by the family of Soredig, and bore their name; took afterwards the name of Shoreditch, from a great common sewer, or ditch, which passed through it; had a seat of Edmund Duke of York, at Shore-place, in the 14th century; was the residence of Bailo, the archer, whom Henry VIII. styled his “Duke of Shoreditch,” and who presided over a great fete in the adjoining fields in 1583; and was the retreat of some conspirators seized by Cromwell in 1658.

The parish includes the site of the ancient village, and lies all around it; forms, for the most part, a compactly edificed portion of the metropolis; extends, in a general view, from the Regent’s canal to Finsbury-circus, and from Hackney-road to the City-road; includes Hoxton, Charles, and Nicholl’s squares, and the Curtain, Kingsland, Old Street, and other roads; is traversed by the Great Eastern and the North London railways; contains the original or Bishopsgate terminus of the Great Eastern railway, and a station on the North London railway opposite St. Leonard’s church; has post-offices under London E.

It carries on a great trade in furniture-making, and considerable trade in brewing, silk-weaving, drug-making, and other departments; had 35 places of worship and 195 schools in 1851, and acquired increase of them in subsequent years, somewhat proportionally to its increase of population; has a public hall in the Grecian style, erected in 1867, at a cost of £20,290, two theatres, the Independent and Imperial gasworks, the Hoxton-House lunatic asylum, the St. Luke’s and Shoreditch workhouses, eleven suites of alms-houses, and £345 a year of school endowments; and is cut ecclesiastically into 19 sections, 13 of which are noticed in our articles Hoxton and Haggerstone. Acres, 646. Pop. in 1851, 109,257; in 1861, 129,364. Houses, 17,072.

The head living, or St. Leonard’s, and also most of the other livings, are vicarages in the dio. of London. Value of St. Leonard’s, £656. Patron, the Archdeacon of London. St. Leonard’s church was rebuilt in 1735, by Dance; and is a stone structure, 130 feet by 70, with a Doric portico and a tower and spire 192 feet high. St. Mark’s church is in the pointed style, and has a tower and spire. St. James’ church was built in 1839; St. Michael’s church, in 1864.

The district is conterminate with the parish; and is divided into the sub-districts of Holywell, St. Leonard, Hoxton-New-Town, Hoxton-Old-Town, Haggerstone-West, and Haggerstone-East. Poor rates in 1863, £41,698. Marriages in 1863, 2,002; births, 5,328,-of which 200 were illegitimate; deaths, 3,330,-of which 1,602 were at ages under 5 years, and 45 at ages above 85. Marriages in the ten years 1851-60, 16,343; births, 47,316; deaths, 28,911. The places of worship, in 1851, were 9 of the church of England, with 8,089 sittings; 4 of Independents, with 3,810 s.; 7 of Baptists, with 2,410 s.; 2 of Wesleyans, with 1,200 s.; 2 of New Connexion Methodists, with 250 s.; 2 of Primitive Methodists, with 198 s.; 1 of Bible Christians, with 400 s.; 2 of the Wesleyan Association, with 400 s.; 1 of Calvinistic Methodists, with 822 s.; 1 of Brethren, with 30 s.; 3 undefined, with 630 s.; and 1 of Latter Day Saints, with 250 s. The schools were 24 public day-schools, with 5,029 scholars; 144 private day-schools, with 3,868 s.; 24 Sunday schools, with 6,329 s.; and 3 evening schools for adults, with 121 s. The workhouse is in Haggerstone-West; and, at the census of 1861, had 737 inmates.

Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].

The Parliamentary Gazetteer of England and Wales 1851

Shoreditch (St. Leonard), a parish in the Tower division of the hund. of Ossulstone, county of Middlesex. It includes the districts of Hoxton, Church-End, Moorfields, and Holywell-street.

Living, a vicarage in the archd. and dio. of London; rated at £17; gross income £660. Patron, the archdeacon of London. The church is a handsome edifice, built from designs of the elder Mr. Dance. The west front has a Doric portico of the Roman style of architecture. The Independents, Baptists, and Methodists, have places of worship here; and there are 8 infant, 248 daily, 3 day and Sunday, and 10 Sunday, schools. A parochial school for boys is endowed with £66 10s., and another for girls with £169, per annum. The alms houses of the Haberdashers’ company are situated at Hoxton; which see.

Almshouses for poor persons, appointed by the Ironmongers’ company, are endowed with £703 3s. 1d. per annum. This extensive parish consists of numerous streets connecting it with the metropolis, and of extensive ranges of buildings along the roads to Kingsland, Hackney, and Bethnal Green. It is well-paved, lighted with gas, and has an ample supply of water.

The principal branches of manufacture carried on here are connected with the silk factories in the neighbouring parish of Spitalfields: which see. Shoreditch is within the jurisdiction of a court of requests for the Tower Hamlets, for recovery of debts not exceeding £5, and within the limits of the new police act. Acres 620. Houses 10,698. A. P., in 1815, £139,868; in 1828, £294,243. Pop., in 1801, 33,766; in 1831, 68,564. Poor rates, in 1838, £22,598 18s.

Source: The Parliamentary Gazetteer of England and Wales; A Fullarton & Co. Glasgow; 1851.

Parish Records

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England, Middlesex, St. Leonard-Shoreditch

Administration

County: Middlesex
Civil Registration District: Shoreditch
Probate Court: Court of the Archdeaconry of London
Diocese: London
Rural Deanery: Not created until 1858
Poor Law Union: Shoreditch
Hundred: Ossulstone (Tower Division)
Province: Canterbury

Shoreditch St Leonard Middlesex Family History Guide

Adjacent Parishes

Parish History

The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870

The Parliamentary Gazetteer of England and Wales 1851

Parish Records

FamilySearch

Administration

Wiltshire Parish Registers Marriages V. 2

Shropshire Parish Registers Diocese of Lichfield V. 8

Blewbury Co. Berkshire Parish Registers 1588-1813

Nottingham (Arnold & Daybrook) 1899: Nottinghamshire Sheet 38.06 (Old Ordnance Survey Maps of Nottinghamshire)