Place:Houghton St. Giles, Norfolk, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Houghton St. Giles from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1871-72:

"[HOUGTON ST. GILES, or] HOUGHTON-IN-THE-HOLE, or HOUGHTON-LE-DALE, a parish in Walsingham [registration] district, Norfolk; on the river Stiffkey, and on the Norwich and Wells railway, 1 mile SSW of New Walsingham. Post town: New Walsingham, under Fakenham. Acres: 978. Real property: £1,615. Population: 191. Houses: 46. The property is divided among a few. The manor belongs to Henry L. Warner, Esq. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Norwich. Value: £148. Patron: H. L. Warner, Esq. The church is decorated English, and has a fine E window, and [the] remains of a carved screen. A small ancient chapel, on the W side of the parish, is supposed to have belonged to Walsingham abbey; and was converted into a barn."

Houghton St. Giles was one of four parishes absorbed into the newly created parish of Barsham in Norfolk, England in 1935.

The mediaeval pilgrimage centre of Walsingham lies only 1¼ miles north of Houghton St. Giles, and the Roman Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady or Slipper Chapel is actually located within the present civil parish of Barsham.

Research tips

• GENUKI provides a list of references for Houghton St. Giles. Some entries lead to free online transcriptions of registers and censuses.
• GENUKI also supplies a map illustrating the individual parishes of Gallow Hundred. Parishes labelled with letters should be identifiable from the Ordnance Survey Map of 1900.
• GENUKI also advises that the following lists for Norfolk are to be found in FamilySearch:

• England, Norfolk, Parish Registers (County Record Office), 1510-1997
• England, Norfolk Archdeacon's Transcripts, 1600-1812
• England, Norfolk Bishop's Transcripts, 1685-1941
• England, Norfolk Marriage Bonds, 1557-1915
• England, Norfolk Non-conformist Records, 1613-1901

• Ancestry.co.uk has the following lists as of 2018 (UK or worldwide Ancestry membership or library access required). With the exception of the index to wills these files are browsible images of the original documents. The files are separated by type and broken down into time periods (i.e., "Baptism, Marriages, and Burials, 1535-1812" is more than one file). The general explanatory notes are worth reading for those unfamiliar with English parish records.

• Index to wills proved in the Consistory Court of Norwich : and now preserved in the District Probate Registry at Norwich
• Norfolk, England, Bishop's Transcripts, 1579-1935
• Norfolk, England, Church of England Baptism, Marriages, and Burials, 1535-1812
• Norfolk, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1915
• Norfolk, England, Church of England Deaths and Burials, 1813-1990
• Norfolk, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1940

• FindMyPast is another pay site with large collection of parish records. As of October 2018 they had 20 types of Norfolk records available to browse including Land Tax Records and Electoral Registers.