Baptist Birth and Death Records.

Many people will be unaware that they have regularly visited the old Baptist Chapel in Market Lavington. Chapel Lane is the little footpath that leads from the High Street – almost opposite the Co-op – to The Clays. The Baptist Chapel has, for many a decade, been the fish and chip shop.

The Baptist Chapel - now the Fish and Chip shop

In the nineteenth century the chapel folk performed their own baptisms and also their own burials. The area behind the chapel turned fish and chip shop was the burial ground. We have copies of their registers in the museum.

Baptism records from the Baptist Chapel at Market Lavington

This list is hand written, but we can pick out common local names such as Oram, Sainsbury, Baker, Davis and Maslen – names still to be found in the village.

These records have been transcribed – here we show records of burials in the ground along Chapel Lane.

Transcribed Baptist burial records at Market Lavington Museum

To fit the scale of this blog vital information, like the year of the burial, has been missed here but even so, this makes for rather sad reading. Nine of the 15 burials with an age given were children under 5 and another was a workhouse resident.

The local names are, once again, well represented. These lists may well help genealogists locate a hard to find relative.

Tags: baptism, baptist, burial, Easterton, Fiddington, Market Lavington, Religion