Helpfully at the start of the register inside a blank page an annual total of burials was recorded.
The entry for 1849 records that the drop from the previous year total of 44 for 1848 to a total of 23 for 1849 was due to "a severe visitation of cholera from which this parish was mercifully preserved".
This is very useful for historical purposes because the early years of the register refer to burials of children and elderly adults from The Parish Poorhouse confirming that in addition to the Sevenoaks Workhouse (at Saint John's Hill) for Sevenoaks parish and district Sundridge also accommodated its poor in the parish. The earlier 1777 parliamentary report records that up to 40 persons could be accommodated in the parish.
After 1834 the Sevenoaks Poor Law Union was established and Sundridge was able to elect 2 Guardians to the Union Board. Initially the Board of Guardians received poor from Sundridge at the old Saint John's Hill site,which they had expanded and resisted the Poor Law Commissioner's recommendation to erect a purpose built Workhouse. Over the early 1840's the Board of Guardians faced increasing demands to erect a new purpose built Workhouse. Several inadquacies at the Saint John's Hill site were criticised following an inspection after the 1840/1841 winter which identified overcrowding and illness amongst children as particulary unacceptable. The inspection report makes grim reading and the Sevenoaks Board of Guardians were compelled to seek a site to erect alternative accommodation, The site chosen is in Church Hill Sundridge. Unusually and possibly because of it's rural location many of the buildings survive transferring from Union to National Health Service Hospital in 1948 retaining the original infirmary buildings. When the NHS closed the hospital and disposed of the land the original buildings were still retained in the conversion to private residential homes within a gated community.
The Sundridge burial register therefore records pauper burials before the 1840's and after 1843 refers to Sundridge Union Workhouse or more appropriately Sevenoaks Union paupers. As is usual with parishes in which a Union Workhouse is located any paupers requiring burial which cannot be returned to parish of origin within the Union are to be buried there. Sundridge churchyard therefore contains burials for very young infants including one child who was intended to be returned to Bolton in Lancashire and referred to as a "casual Pauper". The Union workhouse did not build cells for "Casual" paupers until 1896. This population of men and women "on the tramp" would arrive 15-20 daily according to Guardians minute books in mid afternoon. Until the 1896 buildings they would be accommodated for up to 3 nights on the site. They were required to bathe and their clothing would be fumigated and stored. George Orwell describes this "spike" as having the worst reputation in Ingland although he found conditions acceptable as he writes in Down and Out in Paris and London.
The register also reflects that two additional settlements at Goathurst Common and Ide Hill were for parts of the year cut off from the church at Sundridge. A large group of burials each year are from this part of the parish. The Bishop of London constructed a chapel and burial ground in 1807. In 1853 a burial register for Ide Hill was created. I have transcribed both registers for Kent Online Parish Clerks and they will be published in due course. It is possible to find some family members from Ide Hill and Goathurst Common buried in Sundridge after the creation of Ide Hill Saint Mary the Virgin as a parish although the larger number of burials take place at Ide Hill . Family graves at Sundridge would have been used until they were full subsequent graves were at Ide Hill.
The 1807 chapel at Ide Hill was replaced by the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in 1865 and this became a separate parish,
© Henry Mantell Downe and Farnborough Online Parish Clerk 2013-2020
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