Place:Brooke, Norfolk, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Brooke is a village and civil parish in the South Norfolk District of Norfolk, England, about 7 miles south of Norwich and roughly equidistant from Norwich and Bungay in Suffolk. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 1,242 in 554 households.

The church of Brooke St Peter is one of 124 existing round-tower churches in Norfolk.

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

"BROOKE, a parish in Loddon [registration] district, Norfolk; on an affluent of the river Yare, 4¾ miles WNW of Loddon, and 6 E of Florden [railway] station. It has a post office under Norwich. Acres: 2,135. Real property: £4,415. Population: 746. Houses: 168. The property is divided between two. Brooke Hall and Brooke House are the chief residences; and the former is an edifice in the Grecian style, built in 1830. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Norwich. Value: £216. Patron: the Lord Chancellor. The church is good; and there is a Baptist chapel. Charities, £156. Sir Astley Cooper was a native."

Research Tips

• GENUKI provides a list of references for Brooke. Some entries lead to free online transcriptions of registers and censuses.
• A map illustrating the individual parishes of Clavering Hundred may be useful. 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.