Place:Hellesdon, Norfolk, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Hellesdon is a village, parish and suburb of Norwich in the District of Broadland in Norfolk, England. It lies approximately 4 miles (6.4 kilometres) northwest of Norwich and had a population of 11,132 according to the 2011 UK census. Norwich International Airport is located within the parish.

Hellesdon has signs of very early settlement. A variety of flint instruments have been unearthed in and around Hellesdon, thought to date back at least 4,000 years. A collection of bronze axe heads were found near Hellesdon Hall and a skeleton dating from around 600 AD was discovered next to Hellesdon Lodge in Low Road.

Hellesdon was one of several manors owned in the fifteenth century by Sir John Fastolf, the original of Shakespeare's Falstaff. On his death in 1459, the possession of the property and others in his ownership led to something close to a private war between the Paston family and John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk.

In the 1880s the railway reached Hellesdon linking it to nearby Norwich. In 1915 Mann Egerton & Co. Ltd. built H1s, Spads and Type B seaplanes in Hellesdon. In the 1920s construction of the Norwich ring road began, making Hellesdon much more accessible.

The area has now developed into a major suburb of Norwich.

Research Tips

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