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- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
- source: Family History Library Catalog
- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Watton is a market town in the Breckland District within Norfolk, England. The A1075 Dereham-Thetford road and the B1108 Brandon-Norwich road meet at a crossroads here, where the town developed, about 25 miles (40 km) west of Norwich.
The civil parish covers an area of 7.2 km2 (2.8 sq mi) with a population of 7,202 in 3,226 houses at the 2011 UK census. The Domesday Book of 1086 recorded that Watton (or Wadetuna) featured a church, manor house and Anglo-Saxon settlement.
Watton Airfield
Watton hosted a large RAF station for many years, namely RAF Watton, which stimulated the town's economy. After the Second World War and later changes, the RAF station was used as a Transport Command airfield and as a radar station, as well as providing housing for many RAF personnel and their families. Most of the station has been developed as part of the Blenheim Grange housing estate. The runway is being returned to agricultural land. Part of the old military land was developed as Wayland Prison.
For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Watton, Norfolk.
Research Tips
- GENUKI provides a list of references for Watton. Some entries lead to free online transcriptions of registers and censuses.
- GENUKI also supplies a map illustrating the individual parishes of Wayland 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.
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