Norfolk Workhouse Admission & Discharge Registers

For each record, you can view a transcription of the key details found in the register and an image of the original document. The details may vary by date and by place but most should include the following information.

• Name
• Date
• Poor Law Union
• Workhouse admitted to
• Parish admitted from

Records are available for the following four Poor Law Unions only:

• Aylsham – workhouses in Aylsham, Buxton and Oulton
• Forehoe – workhouse in Wicklewood
• Loddon & Clavering – workhouse in Heckingham
• Norwich – St Andrew’s workhouse

Each Poor Law Union was a cluster of parishes joining together to share resources and responsibility for the care of the poor. For example, Forehoe Union comprised the following parishes: Barford, Barnham Broom, Bawburgh, Bowthorpe, Brandon Parva, Carleton Forehoe, Colton, Costessey, Coston, Crownthorpe, Deopham, Easton, Hackford, Hingham, Kimberley, Marlingford, Morley St Botolph, Morley St Peter, Runhall, Welborne, Wicklewood, Wramplingham and Wymondham.

The Unions also became the Registration Districts for the same catchment areas.

You are quite likely to find the same individual or family needing to have recourse to the services of the Union multiple times, for instance over the same winter in a time of want, or over a number of years. Each record in your list free search results may look similar but the images will give much more detail, including dates of admission and discharge, and we would encourage you to look closely at these to see what they might reveal about an ancestor or other person of interest. In some cases, unfortunately, death within an institution is recorded.

Some of the registers are of the type known as creed registers. These record the denomination of the person admitted to the workhouse – i.e. Anglican, Catholic, Methodist or other.