Place:West Harling, Norfolk, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

West Harling was an ancient and civil parish until it was merged into Harling along with the larger East Harling parish in 1935. It was located in the southern part of Norfolk, England.

It included the smaller settlement of Middle Harling and before 1543 it was the ecclesiastical parish of Little Harling.

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

"HARLING (West), a parish in Guiltcross [registration] district, Norfolk; 2¼ miles S by W of Harling-Road [railway] station, and 7¼ E by N of Thetford. Post-town: East Harling, under Thetford. Acres: 3,034. Real property: £1,235. Population: 124. Houses: 27. The manor, with all the property, belongs to the baronet family of Nugent; whose seat is West Harling Hall. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Norwich. Value: £168. Patron: the Hon. Lady Nugent. The church is ancient but good; has an embattled tower; and contains some brasses.

Research Tips

• GENUKI provides a list of references for West Harling. Some entries lead to free online transcriptions of registers and censuses.
• GENUKI also supplies a map illustrating the individual parishes of Guiltcross 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.