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Norfolk: Gazetteers and Directories

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The term gazetteer means "Geographical index or dictionary" and may contain some biographical information about previous inhabitants of a place.

Directories are books containing some of the following:

  • classified lists of inhabitants of a district
  • members of trades or professions
  • a list of the streets in a place (usually only the largest ones)
  • telephone numbers

which existed at the date of publication. Many also include a short account of the history of the place first. Examples of directory entries are available for a number of Publishers and years so one can ascertain their usefulness.

They have been grouped together because of the difficulty of splitting them into the separate topics of directories and gazetteers. Most of the books contain both so have been listed as follows:

  • Volumes covering the County or a number of Counties of which Norfolk is one.
  • Town directories.

Please note that the early directories (pre 1900) do not list every person in a town or village. This is because some were by subscription and others did not justify the cost. Some of these also contain archaic terms and unexplained abbreviations which are not in general use any more. The later Kellys and others (1890s onward) give a far better coverage but generally only include the head of the household.

An increasing number are being reprinted of which some are on fiche.

Norfolk County entries

City/Town.

  • Aylsham
      Aylsham Directories 1793-1937
    [ISBN: 0-9521564-4-X, Aylsham Local History Society, 2004]
  • Gorleston (was in Suffolk but is included in some Great Yarmouth dirs.)
  • Great Yarmouth
  • Kings Lynn
  • Norwich
  • Swaffham
      Yates'
    Swaffham and District Directory
    1970-71
  • Thetford
      Henry Green
    Thetford and District Almanac and Directory
    1936
    [Bibliopolis CD books, 2005]
  • Watton
      Kelly's
    Watton Directory
    1970-71

Transcriptions

Many Towns and Parishes have been transcribed from the White's directories of 1845 and 1883 and are fully searchable individually or via the icon at the top of this page.

Online Images

Online images (some of which are searchable) may be found at:

These pages are for personal use only. They may not be copied, and the links within them may not be harvested for use on your own web pages. Please see the Copyright Notice.

Copyright © Mike Bristow.
April 2011