Whittlesey St Mary Cambridgeshire Family History Guide
Whittlesey St Mary is an Ancient Parish in the county of Cambridgeshire.
Other places in the parish include: Eastrea.
Alternative names: Wetesie
Parish church:
Parish registers begin:
- Parish registers: 1654
- Bishop’s Transcripts: 1599
Nonconformists include: Particular Baptist and Wesleyan Methodist.
Table of Contents
Adjacent Parishes
Parish History
The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870
WHITTLESEY, a town, two parishes, and a district, in Cambridge. The town stands on the Old Nen river, adjacent to the Peterborough, March, and Ely railway, 5½ miles E by S of Peterborough. It was known, at Domesday, as Witesie; underwent much recent improvement; is a seat of petty-sessions, and a polling place; and has a post-office under Peterborough, a r. station with telegraph, two banking offices, a hotel and several inns, a town hall, reading and newsrooms, a fine ancient church of different dates restored in 1862, another ancient church chiefly decorated English, five dissenting chapels, two endowed schools with £16 and £20 a year, a workhouse, town lands £309, general charities £169, a weekly market on Friday, and fairs on 25 January, 13 June, and 26 Oct. Pop. in 1861, 4,496. Houses, 1,087.
The parishes are St. Mary and St. Andrew; they have long lost their mutual boundaries, so as to be now intermixed; and they include the hamlet and chapelry of Coates, and the hamlet of Eastrea. Acres, 25,131. Real property, £57,136. Pop. in 1851, 7,687; in 1861, 6,966. Houses, 1,592. The manor belongs to J. W. Childers, Esq. Traces of a Roman road are at Eldernell; and several antiquities, including a massive gold ring, have been found there. The livings of St. Mary and St. Andrew are vicarages in the diocese of Ely. Value of St. M., £222; of St. A., £490. Patron of St. M., J. W. Childers, Esq.; of St. A., the Lord Chancellor. The living of Coates was formerly a p. curacy, but is now a rectory; and it has been separately noticed. A small new church is at Ponders-Bridge; and Wesleyan chapels are at Coates and Eastrea.
The district is conterminate with the two parishes. Poor rates in 1863, £5,606. Marriages in 1863, 56; births, 257, of which 24 were illegitimate; deaths, 134, of which 50 were at ages under 5 years, and 5 at ages above 85. Marriages in the ten years 1851-60, 518; births, 2,768: deaths, 1,653. The places of worship, in 1851, were 4 of the Church of England, with 2,625 sittings; 1 of Independents, with 300 s.; 2 of Baptists, with 640 s.; 3 of Wesleyans, with 498 s.; 1 of Primitive Methodists, with 70 s.; and 1 of Wesleyan Reformers, with 150 s. The schools were 3 public day-schools, with 467 scholars; 29 private day-schools, with 594 s.; and 10 Sunday schools, with 680 s.
Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].
Parish Registers
Fragments from the mutilated marriage registers of St. Mary’s, Whittlesey; in the Isle of Ely, county of Cambridge, 1655 to 1694
Fragments from the Mutilated Marriage Registers of St. Mary’s, Whittlesey; in the Isle of Ely, county of Cambridge, 1655 to 1694 2 MB 0 downloads
Fragments from the Mutilated Marriage Registers of St. Mary’s, Whittlesey; in the Isle of Ely, county of Cambridge, 1655 to 1694 Transcribed by Henry Peet. Publisher: Date of publication: 1902 …In 1880 a leaf from the Registers of St. Mary’s Church, Whittlesey, in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, was found by Mr. James Coleman, a Tottenham bookseller, amongst a bundle of parchments purchased by him in the ordinary course of his business. This leaf contained upwards of two hundred entries of Marriages solemnized in St. Mary’s Church, between the years 1662 and 1672. Mr. Coleman very properly returned the original to the then Vicar of Whittlesey, and issued to a select number of subscribers, a small octavo pamphlet of eight pages, containing copies of these Marriage Registers. This pamphlet, a copy of which is preserved in the College of Arms, is now out of print, and very difficult to procure, but this is not to be regretted, as I find about one-third of the entries have been inaccurately transcribed. It is quite certain that the person employed by Mr. Coleman to copy the Register had a most imperfect acquaintance with the hand-writing of the period, and very little experience generally in deciphering parochial records. The errors are not only numerous but in many places grotesque. By the courtesy of the Vicar of Whittlesey St. Mary’s (Rev. Colin E. B. Bell, M.A.) I have been permitted to examine the original Register, in order that a more reliable copy may be printed. Every entry in the following transcript has been carefully collated. In a few instances where the parchment is worn, and in one or two places where the names have been carelessly written, I have furnished, in brackets, an alternate rendering, and have indicated in foot-notes, information gleaned from other parts of the Registers and from outside sources, which may give enlightenment on doubtful entries. In all cases of un-certainty I have added a note of interrogation.
From an examination of the Whittlesey Parish Registers I find that all those anterior to 1690 (with the exception of one thin folio volume) are in a most deplorable state, and have suffered sadly not only from neglect, but it is to be feared from wilful ill-usage by some irresponsible meddler. It would also appear that much of this wanton destruction has occurred within comparatively recent times, as in 1868 these Registers were examined by the Rev. W. D. Sweeting, M.A., (the editor of Fenland Notes and Queries), and his report, embodied in his Parish Churches in the Neighbourhood of Peterborough, is worthy of reproduction. In this delightful book, every page of which contains a rich mine of antiquarian lore, he writes on page 99: – “The oldest Register is dated 1560. For upwards of 100 years the Registers are unbound ; the detached leaves are much worn, and in most cases illegible. Very few pages are quite perfect. In some cases the damage seems to have been wilful, for the page dated 1611 is torn from top to bottom, and this has been done since 1827 for a MS. note by Edward Ground, the churchwarden of that date, is itself torn in half, and one half lost. The Baptisms from 1560 to 1594 are tolerably regular, but only a few entries can be made out. About 1562 the entries ceased to be made in Latin. The first legible Burial Register is 1590, after which it is continuous, except that a leaf of date 1606 is lost, and that there is only a small fragment between the dates 1654 — 64.”
Bad as their condition was 30 years ago, it is infinitely worse to-day. These early Registers now consist of about 36 loose fragments of portions of the parchment leaves — gall-stained, mildewed, moth-eaten — and almost wholly undecipherable. Not one page is perfect. There is a fragment containing Baptisms from 1560 to 1590 ; three torn leaves, badly damp-stained, on which can faintly be traced entries of Marriages in the years 1654 and 1655; and a portion of a leaf containing a few Marriages, in what appears to be the year 1679. The remaining 31 torn and decayed fragments have evidently been the Burial Register, commencing in 1563 and extending, with numerous gaps, to 1668. It would appear that at some period an attempt has been made to read the Registers by the indefensible practice of applying a chemical & substance to the ink, in order to resuscitate it, with the result that whole pages have been completely obliterated.
From this wreckage I have transcribed such of the Marriage entries as can be deciphered, and also all those Marriages which appear in the thin folio volume. These latter are for the years 1683, 1688, 1689, 1690, 1691, 1692, 1693 and 1694.
Henry Peet, F.S.A.
Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, Nov., 1901.
Parish Records
FamilySearch
Cambridgeshire Historical Directories
The Post Office Directory of Cambridge, Norfolk and Suffolk 1875 178.8 MB 0 downloads
The Post Office Directory of Cambridge, Norfolk and Suffolk 1875 Edited by E. R. Kelly Publisher: Kelly & Co. Date of publication: 1875 …Administration
- County: Cambridgeshire
- Civil Registration District: Whittlesey
- Probate Court: Court of the Bishop of Ely (Episcopal Consistory)
- Diocese: Ely
- Rural Deanery: Ely
- Poor Law Union: Whittlesey
- Hundred: North Witchford
- Province: Canterbury