St Mary's Church
Registers
The church registers of St. Mary’s go back to 1577, with 1700 the first legible date for a memorial in the churchyard.
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That dedication, to Mary wife of the village baker Christopher Burway, is just one of hundreds of memorials inside the church and out which have been carefully catalogued and which provide a wealth of information for family history researchers.
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The most commonly represented surnames are Annison, Barker, Fox, Hall, Nelson, Parker, Raven, Skinner, Thing and Yaxley, but many more are featured.
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And it’s not just surnames which are of interest. The memorials feature three very unusual Christian names which reflect an old Norfolk tradition. These are Pretoria Parker (1901-1968), named after the Boer War; Happy Hall (1876-1936), and Kerenhappuch Makens (1799-1860).
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The last named derives from the Book of Job and literally means a small box used for eye make-up.
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