Places covers the names of buildings, streets, hamlets, parishes, counties, and geographical features. It does not include manors or hundreds; these are dealt with as name authority records in People and Organisations.
Placenames can be accessed from the Browse menu.
Placenames can be searched by typing a term in the Search Places box. Phrases should be enclosed by double quotation marks, e.g., "Rockland St Mary". Numbers in brackets after a place name indicate the presence of narrower terms. Numbers in the Archival description count and Authority record count columns indicate the number of records linked to the term.
Viewing a place name enables a new set of options on the left of the screen: Treeview, List and Search.
- Treeview displays place names as a hierarchy. There are four top level terms: Norfolk, Suffolk, UK and World. The triangle to the left of a name indicates the presence of a lower level. Clicking on these opens the next level below and so on.
- The List option displays all the names in alphabetical order.
- The Search option works like the Search Places box but wildcards can be used to search for variant spellings: asterisk (*) for multiple characters and question mark (?) for individual characters.
Entries include non-preferred terms or known alternatives, e.g., Bintree will find the preferred term Bintry, Bathele will find Bale.
Please note we are indexing records from the 14th century onwards.
- Individuals usually gave their place of residence as a parish and for urbanised areas possibly a street or lane. The phrase "of Wymondham" or "of King's Street" is often the only geographical reference available.
- A few house numbers appear in the 1783 Norwich Directory but numbers for every street is not established until the 1912 Directory. The Places index presents street numbers hierachically as something like parish>street>street (property number).
- Postcodes were first introduced nationally in the 1960s and will rarely feature in our descriptions of records created before then.
TIPS
- Search words can be upper or lower case.
- If there are too many entries linked to a placename, make an exact note of the placename and use the Advanced Search. In the Advanced Search form, enter the placename (use double quotes if a phrase) and select Placename for the In option. Click on Add new criteria and/or use the Date options to limit your search even more.
- The search will also look in the Use for field. For example, a search on "Walsingham" will find "Houghton St Giles, Norfolk" because "Houghton next Walsingham" is an alternative name for this parish.
