Place:Newington, London, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

The ecclesiastical parish of Newington St. Mary was part of the Brixton Hundred of Surrey and this in turn contained all of the manor of Walworth. In 1855 the parish came within the area of responsibility of the Metropolitan Board of Works and the parish vestry was incorporated as a local authority. At this point the ecclesiastical parish became a civil parish with the name Newington. In 1889 the parish became part of the County of London. In the further reorganisation of local government in 1900 the parish became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Southwark (commonly known, even today, as "the Borough"). The civil parish was abolished in 1930 and merged with three other parishes to become Southwark. The parish was of 633 acres (2.56 km2) and the population peaked in 1901 at 121,863. Newington is the northern part of Walworth on the adjacent map. [edit] Ecclesiastical parish From 1826, as the population of Newington increased, the ancient parish of St Mary was separated into a number of new parishes (listed chronologically and all redirected here): Newington Holy Trinity in 1826 Walworth St Peter in 1826 Newington St Paul in 1857 Walworth St John in 1860 Newington All Saints in 1866 Newington St Matthew in 1868 Walworth St Mark in 1870 Walworth St Stephen (Walworth Common) in 1871 Grosvenor Park All Souls in 1871 Newington St Andrew in 1877 When the Metropolitan Borough of Southwark replace Newington in 1900, the Walworth parishes listed above were transferred to Camberwell Metropolitan Borough.

History

the following text is a condensation of an article in Wikipedia

Newington was a farming village with a low level of population until the second half of the 18th century. There was a little industry, for example, the manufacture of clay pipes for tobacco smoking. In William Shakespeare's time, there was a theatre called Newington Butts (also the name of a street in the area) and later there were further theatres.

Until 1750 London Bridge was the only means of crossing the looping River Thames for miles in either direction. Newington gained in importance with the building of Westminster Bridge in 1750 and the associated improvements of London Bridge. These required a series of new roads across St George's Fields to interconnect the routes from the bridges and allow traffic from Westminster and Chelsea and places further north to travel into Surrey and Kent or even just to Southwark without transitting through the City of London itself. These routes were Westminster Bridge Road and Borough Road for the West End and Southwark; for the route to the south, London Road and St George's Road which by-passed the Borough High Street and Newington Causeway. All of these roads converged at a junction where there was a blacksmith's forge and inn called Elephant and Castle. This developed into a name to signify the area. Traffic heading to the southeast from the West End was connected to the older route from the City of London and Southwark to Kent as New Kent Road from Newington to a junction with the older route at the Bricklayers Arms.

New roads brought development opportunities. The local landowner started to sell some of his farmland. The 19th century brought more dense speculative housebuilding, and some philanthropic provision too. The Trinity House Newington Estate, laid out on property the institution was left in the 17th century, became a high class residential district and is still largely in existence.

Further urban stimulus was given by the arrival of mainline railway routes from the City to the south, the London, Chatham and Dover Railway built a station at Elephant and Castle in 1863. In 1890 the City and South London Railway (now the Northern Line City Branch of London Underground) was projected through the area with stations at what was termed 'Kennington' (but in fact within Newington) and also at Elephant. In 1906 the newly opened Bakerloo line of London Underground also terminated at the Elephant.

Notable People

The scientist Michael Faraday was born here, in Newington Butts, in 1791. Charles Babbage (1791-1871), the promoter of the first computing machine, in Walworth Road; William Jowett, a 19th-century missionary and author, was born at Newington in 1787, as was the visionary English artist Samuel Palmer in 1805 in Surrey Square. Also born here was William John Swainson (1789-1855), the ornithologist and renowned natural history artist.

Research tips

Greater London Research Tips

Researching ancestors in London will probably be more successful than researching ancestors in the rest of England, particularly for the period before 1837 and the advent of civil registration. Baptisms, marriages and burials are available online for County of London parishes, and possibly for parishes throughout Greater London as well.

• Anglican Parishes in London is a wiki here on WeRelate listing the places of worship of the established church throughout London. The churches are grouped within the post-1965 boroughs and for each is the street address, a link to the Booth Map (inner boroughs only), the time span for which the database AIM25 holds records, the FamilySearch Wiki link (see below), the Wikipedia link, and further notes. This is a work-in-progress and not all churches are listed as yet, but it is a guide to a great deal more information on those for which information has been gathered.
• The London Metropolitan Archives (40 Northampton Road, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 0HB) holds records relating to the whole of Greater London. Ancestry (subscription necessary) has produced transcriptions and provides images of lists of baptisms, marriages, and burials in churches across Greater London. Many of these lists start in 1813 and stretch into the 20th century; some start even earlier.

Maps

• A street-by-street map of London (both sides of the Thames, and stretching from Limehouse, Stepney and Greenwich in the east to Hyde Park and Kensington in the west) drawn by Edward Mogg in 1806. Blows up to a very readable level. Highly recommended viewing. Shows named areas on the edge of the County of London (1900-1965) as the small villages they were in 1800. Streets in the City are named, but churches are missing.
• The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers edited by Cecil Humphery-Smith and published by Phillimore & Co Ltd (edition of 1995) provides a map of the City of London indicating all the parishes and includes dates of commencement of registers for parishes formed before 1832.
• Wikipedia has an expandable map of the area of devastation of the 1666 fire. The map includes the location of Pudding Lane where the fire started.
• A map of London in the 1890s provided by the National Library of Scotland. There are a few steps between the home page index and the individual maps which may be difficult to follow for those who don't know London, but the maps themselves are produced at the scale of 5 feet to the mile on the original and are very clear. Houses on streets are marked, but not numbered.
• Ordnance Survey map of London 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing London parishes just after the reorganization of 1899. The map was originally drawn over a street map at a scale of 1 inch to the mile and can be blown up to inspect a single borough. Only the major streets are marked and are only visible at maximum magnification. The City of London is an inset in the top right hand corner.
• Ordnance Survey map of Middlesex 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing the parishes remaining in Middlesex after the reorganization of 1899 when much of the former area of Middlesex had been transferred into London.
• Ordnance Survey map of Surrey 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing Surrey parishes (chiefly Southwark) just after the reorganization of 1899 when the most urban parts of Surrey were transferred into London.
• Ordnance Survey map of Kent 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing Kent parishes just after the reorganization of 1899 when the western part of Kent had been transferred into London.
• Ordnance Survey map of Essex 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing Essex parishes (West Ham, East Ham, Ilford) which were absorbed into Greater London in 1965.

Registration Districts

• Registration Districts in London, Registration Districts in Middlesex, Registration Districts in Surrey, Registration Districts in Kent, and Registration Districts in Essex are lists of the registration districts used for civil registration (births, marriages and deaths, as well as the censuses). There are linked supporting lists of the parishes which made up each registration district, the dates of formation and abolition of the districts, the General Register Office numbers, and the local archive-holding place. This work has been carried out by Brett Langston under the agency of GENUKI (Genealogy United Kingdom and Ireland) and UKBMD - Births, Marriages, Deaths & Censuses on the Internet, and has been updated into the 21st century. If the only information about an individual has been obtained from UKBMD, the name of the registration district is considered a "placename" within WeRelate and can be used to provide a broad estimate of the location.

Cemeteries

• Deceased Online includes four of the "Magnificent Seven" cemeteries (Brompton, Highgate, Kensal Green, and Nunhead) in its inventory of 65 London cemeteries. Transcripts for Abney Park are free with registration online at www.devsys.co.uk/ap/. Ancestry (international subscription necessary) has "London, England, City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery Registers, 1841-1966". That leaves West Norwood without comprehensive online access to burial records. (Deceased Online and Ancestry may have increased their provision since this was written in 2016.)
• As of October 2019 Ancestry has a file titled "England & Scotland, Select Cemetery Registers 1800-2016" which includes Abney Park Cemetery, Greenford Park Cemetery, Acton Cemetery, Ealing & Old Brentford Cemetery, Havelock Norwood Cemetery, Hortus Cemetery, South Ealing Cemetery, Queens Road Cemetery, and Chingford Mount Cemetery.
• The City of London Cemetery, at Manor Park, near Wanstead in the London Borough of Redbridge also contains remains transferred from former parishes in the City of London whose graveyards have been replaced by streets and commercial buildings.
• Brookwood Cemetery, beyond the Greater London borders in Surrey, was opened in 1854 for burials for Londoners. See the Wikpedia article.

Other online sources

• See the FamilySearch Wiki under "London" and also under "Middlesex", "Surrey", "Essex" and "Kent" for key information about Greater London's jurisdictions and records, plus links to indexes, reference aids and Family History Library holdings.
• GENUKI has a long list of websites and archive holders in addition to London Metropolitan Archives above. (The list from GENUKI is not maintained so well that there is never a dead link in it. However, it is often worth googling the title given on the page just in case the contributor has reorganized their website and GENUKI has not picked it up.)
• GENUKI also has a list of the Archives and Local Studies Libraries for each of the boroughs of Greater London.
• The London Encyclopaedia by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert. An e-book available online through Google, originally published by Pan Macmillan. There is a search box in the left-hand pane.
• London Lives. A very useful free website for anyone researching their London ancestors between the years 1690-1800. This is a fully searchable edition of 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets, giving access to 3.35 million names.
• London Ancestor, a website belonging to one of the London family history societies, has a list of transcriptions of directories from the 18th century, listing in one case "all the squares, streets, lanes, courts, yards, alleys, &C. in and about Five Miles of the Metropolis..." In other parts of the same website are maps of various parts of 19th century London and Middlesex.
• The proceedings of the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court, 1674-1913. A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court. This website is free to use.
• A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 4, chapter on Newington first published 1912 and available online through British History Online.
• The Victoria County History Series only has as yet one volume dealing with London. This outlines the history of the religious houses of the borough of Southwark and the cities of London and Westminster. Most of the material will predate most genealogical searches.
• Old Maps of Southwark provided by the London Borough of Southwark.

The map, "Southwark areas", is copied from Wikipedia and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0. The original uploader was Se16boy.