St Olave's Parish, Exeter

Registers of baptisms, marriages, burials and banns

<span class="wrapper"><p>Note: For feoffees' deeds of parish lands, c.1270-1554, see DD. 23121 to DD. 23146.</p> <p>The deeds relate to premises in Smith Street and rent of a property in St. Sidwell and include a grant of permission to Rector to build a room over the church, 1408 and in 1539 to extend this; the grant of a 'seler' in St. Olave, and an award concerning legacies left to the parish, 1554.</p> <p>Note: Overseers of the poor records for the parish are not found in this collection. Rate books, 1885-1900 (31 volumes) can be found in the Exeter City Archives collections at Devon Record Office. For other documents relating to poor relief, including rates from 1691, see the on the records in the Exeter City Archives collections.</p></span>

These records are available for research for research. Notice may be required to produce them in the searchroom

Increasing poverty in the late seventeenth century caused the breakdown in Exeter of the system of poor relief by the Overseers of the Poor, especially in the parishes with most paupers. An Act of Parliament of 1698 provided that representatives from each of the City parishes should form a Corporation of the Poor to administer the poor relief for the whole City. This body levied poor rates on the twenty parishes and on Bedford and Bradninch Precincts. Copies of some of these rates survive in the Exeter City Archives in Book 159b(ii)(1708-1732), Book 159b (1691-1733 and 1822) and Book 160 (1752-1756). Box Y5 contains a few seventeenth and eighteenth century rates for some parishes, and folder W7 includes a list of overseers for all parishes, 1747-50. Under the New Poor Law of 1834, the Corporation of the Poor continued to exercise the functions which elsewhere were assumed by the Boards of Guardians.