Current Society Projects

Parish and Cemetery Registers

Archdeaconry of Rochester

Parish registers of the 27 Archdeaconry of Rochester churches that lie in the north west Kent area (held at Medway Archives) have already been scanned and published on CD-Rom as images. Some of these are being transcribed and the work is progressing well - Dartford (Holy Trinity), Northfleet (St Botolph).

Also Stone (St Mary) - the PR's are being transcribed at the Society library and work is already well advanced. Baptisms 1718-1812 and burials 1718-1889 are complete, marriages are in progress.

Horton Kirby, St Mary - transcription is also ongoing at the Society library.

Meopham St John PR's are being transcribed by Meopham House Group.

Bromley Borough

We have now been successful in discussions with Bromley Local Studies & Archives, in that we've been able to publish images of several parish registers that they hold. We are still hopeful that we will be able to publish more of these, though this is subject to the agreement of the parishes concerned.

Greenwich Borough

We have dealt with two sets of records held by Greenwich Heritage Centre, namely Charlton St Luke and Crooms Hill Roman Catholic church. The registers were filmed, scanned and published on CD-Rom in 2007, and Charlton is now being transcribed. We are also currently transcribing Greenwich St Alphege baptisms, c.1750-1850.

Lewisham Borough

A year or more ago, I first reported that the Society was hoping to publish facsimiles of Lee and Lewisham parish registers held by the Lewisham Local Studies & Archive Centre. These had never been filmed before and were therefore not available except as original documents. After discussion with the Archive, we had offered to fund the filming and scanning of these registers at no cost to the Council. For whatever reason, the Council has not seen fit to reply to our offer, one way or the other. We can only assume they do not wish to co-operate with us to place this unique data into a readily accessible format to the benefit of family historians everywhere.

London Metropolitan Archives

For historical reasons the LMA holds the registers of some of the parishes that now lie within Greenwich and Lewisham boroughs. We have successfully negotiated agreement to enable us to publish those records they hold that lie within our area, this involved the ordering of 113 reels of microfilm covering over 400 registers. In 2008 we produced image scans from these registers, i.e. for Deptford (St Nicholas, St Paul), Greenwich (St Alphege), Woolwich (St Mary) and Lewisham (St Mary) - see the Publications pages. A number of these registers are being transcribed.

However it is becoming more difficult to gain access to further records. We had hoped to include the registers for the mid and late Victorian parishes in this area but following their agreement with Ancestry, the LMA will no longer give us access to the films, this comes has no surprise and is another example of commercial organisations gaining a monopoly in controlling access to public records.

Centre for Kentish Studies

Registers of some thirty parishes within our area are held by the CKS at Maidstone. Some time ago we made an approach to ask them to co-operate with the Society by allowing us to scan their Registers with a view to publication. However, CKS has yet to decide how to treat their records in this digital age.

National Burial Index

The Society has donated burials for Charlton St Luke and Northfleet Cemetery to the 3rd Edition of the NBI. See also the NBI page.

Memorial Inscriptions

MI's at Dartford East Hill Cemetery were recorded in 2009-10 and the transcript has now been published.

There is an on-going project at Stone Cemetery undertaken by members of Dartford branch. The inscriptions have all been recorded and typed, and the work is now being checked.

We have also recorded Bessels Green Unitarian Church burial ground in 2010 and this transcript was published (with images of the gravestones) in 2011. We've also made a good start on the nearby Baptist churchyard during 2011. A mile or so north of these burial grounds lies the C of E churchyard of Chevening St Botolph. Most of the MI's here were recorded some years ago and will soon be typed. The project awaits a detailed plot plan, which we have started in 2011.

Census

1851

The 1851 census for the bulk of our area was transcribed and name-indexed by the Society some years ago, and has all been published - initially in book form (seven volumes), later on microfiche. We have re-published some of these volumes on CD-Rom, but with the important addition of original page images. Though five of these CD's (Greenwich parish, Deptford parish, Bromley RD, Dartford RD, Sevenoaks RD) have been published, the project is now dormant due to the wide availability of on-line transcripts & images. For details of this CD-Rom series see 1851 Census on CD-Rom.

1891

The Society has now finished transcribing those parts of the 1891 census that we intend to tackle. i.e. the metropolitan parts of our area. This was done from microfiche copies of the originals, co-ordinated by Brian & May Waymont. The following Registration Districts are already published on CD-Rom: Bromley (69,000 people), Lewisham (93,000 people), Woolwich (107,000 people), and Dartford (38,000 people, excludes Bexley Sub-District). The Bexley part of Dartford has also also been finished and should be published soon.

For more information on our census indexing see Census Indexing Coverage

Kent Strays

The Strays Coordinator for Kent is Society member Audrey Rainer. Existing card indexes and paper lists are being computerised.

Schools Records

We are transcribing two sets of records - Brent School (Stone, Dartford), and St Mary Cray. The latter is now being prepared for publication. For Brent School, we have transcribed the school admission registers from 1894 when the school opened, up to 1935, also the school log books for approximately the same dates. This work is now being prepared for publication.

Hospital Records

Personal names are being extracted from the minute books 1901-39 of Bexley Hospital (which was closed some time ago and the site re-developed). The originals will be deposited at Bexley Local Studies.