Tracing Records
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Please read the following before emailing to find out about Parish Records. You will learn that only current registers are held by St Matthew's. There is a helpful link below....
Bethnal Green has been and remains a mixed community. Since being established as a small hamlet, it has been and is a place to which people have moved or left. Descendants from those who were born or met and married in Bethnal Green can be found around the world. As such, many people tracing their family history are keen to see the baptism, marriage or burial records of the parish.
Only the most recent and current parish records are kept by St Matthew's Church.
As can be seen from the history, St Matthew's Parish was the parish from which other churches were established. Many of these have now closed. Within, or on the edge, of the current parochial boundaries were the churches of:
• Holy Trinity, Old Nichol Street
• St Andrew, Viaduct Place
• St James the Great, Bethnal Green Road
• St Jude, Old Bethnal Green Road
• St Matthias, Cheshire Street
• St Paul, Virginia Road
The churchyard was used for burials until 1877. There are only two graves left in the churchyard, one of the Huguenot family of Peter Renvoize and the other of Joseph Merceron, an infamous 19th century Churchwarden. All other gravestones have been either damaged or removed. There is a map of the graveyard, along with a register of inscriptions as could be discerned in 1896, which are both lodged with the London Metropolitan Archives.
There is a memorial to those from St Matthew's parish who died in the First World War on the left hand side of the entrance porch.
All records - Baptism, Marriages, Burials and other services - for the churches listed above, as well as those for St Matthew's, except for those in current use are kept in the:
London Metropolitan Archives
40 Northampton Road,
London EC1R 0HB
Phone: 020 7332 3820
