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, it should be noted too that there is a father recorded as "Eliza". There are instances where baptism date appears to precede birth date and all are as recorded in the original.