For the many people who are interested in tracing their ancestors, finding out about them tends to be a long and arduous task. Information about former residents of Aveton Gifford has just been made easier to find, by the work of Dr Chris Burgoyne, who is professor in Civil Engineering at Cambridge University.

To use his own words Chris reckons he is related to half the people buried in the churchyard at St Andrew’s church, but is a direct descendant of the Steere family in Aveton Gifford. He has painstakingly transcribed the church registers covering the following periods: BAPTISMS 1675 – 1837

MARRIAGES 1661 – 1837

BURIALS 1678 – 1837

He has now obtained the permission, readily given by the Rev Neill Barker, to place these on the web and they can be found at:

http://www-civ.eng.cam.ac.uk/cjb/agrecord.htm

Here will also be found his index to the Rev. Cuthbert Shaw’s “History of Aveton Giffard” published in the 1960’s.

Chris first became interested in the parish registers when the Rev Shaw had them in the rectory when he was compiling the book and he was allowed to look through the originals in his study. This stimulated him to transcribe them with the results that we see today. He hopes eventually to extend his transcriptions forward to 1900 and back towards their beginning, though reading the old hand writing presents a real problem. A course in palaeography will become essential!

He has done a special study of the world-wide Hingston family and listed the most common names in the register. The list is topped by Elliot(t) with 401, followed by Leigh with 252 and Steer (with its various spellings) with 206.