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The parish of St Philip, Heigham was created from the
mother parish of St Bartholomew in 1868. Heigham forms the western suburbs
of the city of Norwich and was the first area into which the city expanded
beyond its walls. Heigham grew so spectacularly after the mid 1800s that
two new parishes were created, firstly Holy Trinity and in 1868 St Philip,
to serve the expanding population. The present area is actually quite
"inner city" being dominated by rows of Victorian terraces,
there are patches which were cleared following heavy bombing of the area
in the Second World War being replaced with modern blocks. The area is
now part of Norwich's Golden Triangle, an area popular with the University
community and with elevated house prices against similar areas of the
city. St Philip was created to serve the southern portion of the parish
covering the area where the Unthank & Earlham roads converge.
The church was built during the 1860s and although baptisms started as
early as 1868 the church was only completed in 1870. Sadly the church
was demolished in 1975 and housing now stands where it stood with its
tower abutting the junction of Stafford Street and Heigham Road. Pevsner
gives little detail of the building and all that can be determined was
that it had the standard nave, chancel and western tower with a south
aisle and also that the eastern end was apsed. There are a few historic
pictures which show the building as it was in 1962 on the excellent web
site of George Plunkett's pictures (http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Website/raids.htm).
A single standard 1600-entry register book covers the period of the transcript
and runs until 1898. This register is filmed on Microfilm MF1645 in the
collection of the Norfolk Record Office and this was used to prepare this
transcript. The image quality is good with crisp and clear images, the
same cannot be said for the handwriting. Indeed, the clerical standard
of this register is rather poor:-
a) There are numerous "out-of-sequence" entries which indicate
that the register may have been "made up" retrospectively -
a potential source of error & omission.
b) There are entries with missing information including several with wholly
or partially omitted dates.
c) There are curiosities e.g. mothers called Edward & William!
d) There are many examples of birth dates which are later than the given
date of baptism
e) The handwriting in places is extremely trying and errors will probably
have been created through misreads.
Users should treat this register with a degree of caution.
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