The Thetford primitive Methodist Circuit was founded in
1836 and a chapel was erected in Guildhall Street in 1839 to serve the
residents of Thetford itself. The circuit, however, supported not only
a large area of adjacent Norfolk but also, because of Thetford's position
on the border with Suffolk, it covered a large area of northern Suffolk.
Despite catalog details stating baptisms were recorded from 1836, on inspection
only entries from 1853 were present in deposit FC34/72 which is filmed
on Microfilm MF1600, images of this register are also freely available
to view on Familysearch and are of superior quality.
It is necessary to describe the form of the registers as they are more
than one. The circuit starts off with a standard 800 entry register book,
based upon the style commonly found in parishes, however, as the volume
comes towards its conclusion each entry block id ruled to facilitate two
entries per line, there then follows a period when blank pages were double
ruled into a form copying the register format but unnumbered. A second
register commences ulitlising an unnumbered 800-entry register and this
whilst starting beyond the transcript project's end date was found to
contain a batch of 1879 entries and these have been included.
It is also worth noting that the entries, here sorted into date order,
do not follow the numbering of the register - this would appear to have
been the result of a combination of the book being made up retrospectively
by various clerks, each allocated their own batches of pages, this can
lead to some baptisms being recorded multiple times. The standard of clerical
work is poor throughout and all spellings have been left as written, particular
names appear to be troublesome for the clerks and the many variants on
Louisa & Arthur make for amusing reading. There are instances where
baptism date appears to precede birth date and all are as recorded in
the original.
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