Family History

You may know your ancestors came from Gillingham and be looking to see what you can learn about them from the church. This pages summarises what you can find on this website, and points to some other sources of information you may find useful.

Parish Registers

No old records are kept in the parish. The old registers can be found in the Dorset History Centre in Dorchester (they are stored as part of Gillingham Local History Society Museum: local history collection).

You can find information about the opening hours etc. here.

For Gillingham the registers in the History Centre contain the following information:

Register	Dates covered
Baptisms	1564/5 - 1980
Marriages	1559 - 1991
Burials	1559 - 1992
Banns	1754 - 1973

Some of the registers have been transcribed by an "Online Parish Clerk" and made available online - they can be found here.

The earlier parish records were not available for transcription, and will not be, for a very long time due to their poor condition. They can only be seen on microfiche at the History Centre.

(Details of all Parish Registers in the History Centre can be found here.)

Churchwardens accounts

Most of our churchwardens accounts have been lost offer the centuries but those that do exist are like the PRs in the History Centre in Dorchester. There is not a lot of information about named individuals but give a picture of what was going on - and if your ancestor was a churchwarden of what he would have been involved with.

On this site:

WW1 and WW2

We have rolls of honour showing the names of men who died in World War 1 and 2, with some information about them on our War Memorial page (n.b. the information about the men is still being researched / written up). This page also has links to images of pages from the book showing the service of Gillingham men in World War One - both those who died and those who survived; for most men it shows when they joined up, where they served and with what force, whether they received any decorations and if they were wounded.

Monuments

Page being written

Windows

Page to be written

Past clergy

Page to be written (it will have a list of Vicars back to 1318, with more information about a few of them)

Past bell ringers

Page to be written (information is limited)

Index of names appearing on this site

To be written

Graves

Few gravestones remain in the churchyard which was closed for burials many years ago. Most of those gravestones which remain are not legible. Since the churchyard closed most Gillingham folk will have been buried in the town cemetery.

In recent years ashes have been interred in the churchyard on the north side of the church and most are marked with a small stone.