Bedfordshire 
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STOTFOLD, a parish in the hundred of CLIFTON, county of BEDFORD, 2½ miles (N.W.) from Baldock, containing 693 inhabitants. The living is a discharged vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Bedford, and diocese of Lincoln, rated in the kings's books at £5.17.1., endowed with £1200 private benefaction, £400 royal bounty, and £900 parliamentary grant, and in the patronage of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge. The church is dedicated to St. Mary. There is a place of worship for Wesleyan Methodists.
[A Topographical Dictionary of England - Samuel Lewis - 1831]
The 1851 Census Index for Stotfold can be found in the 1851 Index to Census of Bedfordshire, Volume 3, Book 3 available from the Bedfordshire Family History Society.
Church of England
The church of St. Mary is a building of flint, with Ashwell clunch stone dressings to the buttresses, and chiefly in the Early Perpendicular style, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, south and modern north porch and a western embattled tower containing 3 bells, one of which belongs to the pre-Reformation period: there are grotesque heads in several of the bosses, and to the hood mouldings of the principal arches: there were formerly some curious frescoes of St. George and the Dragon, St. Michael weighing souls &c. ; these are now destroyed, but a print, with description, is given in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for Nov. 1827: the font is of Perpendicular date, octagonal and panelled; the chancel was entirely rebuilt, and an organ chamber added in 1890, at a cost of £710, and the rest of the church has been restored at a total cost of £2,500. The register dates from the year 1559.
[Kelly's Directory - Bedfordshire - 1898]
Non-conformist
There is a Calvinistic Baptist chapel built in 1841, a Baptist chapel built in 1857, and a Wesleyan chapel erected in 1869.
[Kelly's Directory - Bedfordshire - 1898]
Church of England
The parish record transcripts for St. Mary, are available on microfiche for the period 1559-1812 from the Bedfordshire Family History Society.
A Cemetery, of two acres was formed in 1897, at a cost of £1,300; it has a mortuary chapel and is, under the control of the parish council. There is an iron building, opened in 1888, and used as a reading-room and lecture hall. The river Rhee runs through the parish and assists in working two large corn mills. Brick and tile making are carried on; and many of the inhabitants are employed in the preparing and cutting of straw for the straw plait trade: here is also a brewery. There is a coprolite pit here owned by Mr. Frederick Smith, of Royston, Cambridgeshire. There are seven almshouses, built in 1843 for the church poor, and other charities to the amount of about £80 yearly, endowed by Henry Octavius Roe esq. in the year 1850. Julius Alington esq. J.P. of Little Barford, and the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, who are lords of the manor, Mrs. W. Vaughan, Mrs. Charles Vaughan and S. Bowman esq. are the chief landowners. About twenty acres of land are thrown into allotments of about one rood each, affording employment to some few of the parishioners. The parish council have also thrown 15 acres of land into allotments of one acre each. The soil is light clay, with beds of gravel ; subsoil, gault. The chief crops are wheat, barley, beans and potatoes and market garden produce generally. The area is 2,390 acres of land and 8 of water ; rateable value, £8,974; the population in 1891 was 3,004, inclusive of 91 officers and 1,056 inmates in the lunatic asylum.
[Extracts from Kelly's Directory - Bedfordshire - 1898]
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[Last updated 16 March 2003 Martin Edwards]