SUFFOLK REGISTRATION DISTRICTS  (before 1837)

A list in alphabetical order with a three letter abbreviation for use with the list of parishes. There were 19 Superintendents' Registration Districts each of which contained a number of sub-districts. When White makes mention of the latter I have included them in his description of each district. The maps show the Suffolk parishes which were grouped together by the New Poor Laws enacted in 1836 and are based on the details provided by William White's 1844 Gazetteer and Directory of Suffolk. Their location is taken from a map showing the Deaneries within the Archdeaconries of Sudbury and Suffolk in 1836.

Newmarket RD is more in Cambridgeshire than in Suffolk. Thetford RD has a number of its constituent parishes in Norfolk and the map appears in both Suffolk and Norfolk books. Ipswich is shown on the Samford map and Bury St. Edmunds on the Thingoe.

There were many changes to these districts in succeeding years but in 1836 the whole county was put in area XII. In 1852 the number was changed to 4a and so it remained until 1946, when in company with so much else those who were incapable of leaving the old establishment in place changed the entire system. Numbering began in Northumberland, descended down the eastern side of the Country to the South Coast and then carried on back up the western side. In 1974 the system was changed yet again with the Country being sub-divided into some 40 areas. Suffolk is in area 10.

The reform Bill of 1832 divided Suffolk into two Divisions for electoral and other purposes with 13 of the old Hundreds in the Eastern Division and 9 in the Western. Alfred the Great is reputed to have split England into Tithings, Hundreds and Counties; each of which had the responsibility of maintaining civil order within its border. A tithing may have comprised 10 freeholders and their families and a number of these tithings, towns or villages, perhaps in groups of 100 were set together and called a  Hundred. A variable number of such areas form a county or shire and Suffolk was made up of 22 Hundreds which are listed  below with a three letter abbreviation again for use with the list of parishes. In only three cases does the boundary of the Hundred coincide with the 1836 RD, namely Hartismere, Samford, and Wangford. Ipswich and Bury St. Edmunds were independent in their own right.

In the list of Hundreds where the same name was used for the RD the three letter abbreviation is repeated. The map of the Hundreds has a dotted line to show the East / West divisional break.

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