Wattisham St Nicholas

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Notes

• There is a saga relating to the early registers of Wattisham. The earliest register, covering the years before 1680, was almost entirely destroyed, apart from one page of baptisms and marriages (1582-1612) which was used as the covers for the 1680-1736 register. See Charles Partridge’s notes, and my best attempt at transcriptions from these very faded and damaged entries.
• See “”A very extraordinary and singular case” at Wattisham, 1762″, when an entire family was ravaged by an unknown disease.
• No entries at all for 1755.
• No baptisms 1812.
• No burials 1784-1791, none 1809-1810.
• Baptisms 1784-1804 and burials 1792-1797 are recorded on separate sheets, with a note saying they’re entries which have been taxed, while “paupers taking relief from the Hundred House” are recorded in the “old register”. By doing this, this is probably how they lost the burials from 1784-1791. It’s unlikely there were no burials at all during that time.
• Marriages end 1743, and don’t resume until Wattisham gets its first printed register in 1783. I have no idea if marriages took place there in that 40 year gap and were lost or not recorded, or if no one was married there at all during that time. However, Suffolk Archives hold seven licences for that period for marriages which were to have taken place “at Wattisham”. One or two couples could’ve changed their minds and married elsewhere at the last minute, but I can’t believe that seven couples would’ve done so! Suffolk FHS’s Suffolk Marriages on Findmypast include some marriages from this period, so some – but I don’t think all – have survived somewhere in, I would imagine, BTs. It may not be unconnected that John Hall, Wattisham’s parish clerk for 49 years, died in April 1783. It’s possible that the printed register starting in 1754 was in his possession when he died, and wasn’t returned to the church.