This clasped volume for 800 Baptisms is completed with 798 entries and two crossed out or blank entries.
It had been practice in earlier Baptismal registers of the parish for those from 1845 onward baptised at Bromley Union Workhouse Chapel to be copy entered into the parish register.
At the beginning of this volume Reverend Fred J Kelly is Vicar and Reverend Philip H Percy is Chaplain to Bromley Union Workhouse and Percy or a scribe copy baptisms at the Workhouse Chapel. It is worth bearing in mind that the chapel also was used for the children of staff and also local parishioners in the northwest of the parish.
There are entries for Reverend J Pulling Curate although these are few in number.
In autumn 1898 Reverend Percy signs entries as Curate in Charge prior to the arrival of Reverend G Lombard MA who resides at Netherby (Bush's Directory 1899 and 1900);Reverend Percy resides at Feniton Farnborough. In 1902 and 1903 Bush's Directory Lombard is residing at The Rectory.
Lombard ends the practice of recording Workhouse Chapel Baptisms in the register in December 1898 and until September 1904 the register only contains parish baptisms. There is a sense that he insists that people come to Saint Giles from all areas of the parish.
For the searcher there are two valuable records of Workhouse Baptisms of children and adults and Births to cover this gap in parish register entries. I have transcribed both records:
Hospital Chapel baptisms
Bromley Union Births Register (1900-1913) Bromley Historic Collections reference 846 GBy/W/I/b12 which includes still births and supplements Anglican Baptisms.
In September 1904 Reverend Ebenezer Joseph Welch is appointed Vicar and also serving as Chaplain to the Workhouse he ensures that all Workhouse Chapel baptisms are copied into the Parish Register.
This register also records in a marginal entry by Ebenezer Welch "By an Order in Council dated 7 August 1905 the parish of Farnborough was formally transferred from the Diocese of Canterbury to the Dioces of Rochester. One of the last entries in 1908 records a Canon of Rochester Diocese performing a baptism.
© Henry Mantell Farnborough Online Parish Clerk 2013-2019
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