Churches before the Great Fire

[fredpuli47]

The Great Fire of London destroyed 87 churches. How many churches were there in the City before the Fire?( All I can find is a lot of stuff about how many were replaced or restored).

[Ankou]

over 107 in the square mile of the city.

[fredpuli47]

Ta,ankou. They lived in a more churchgoing age (and there were some 80,000 people in the square mile in 1666)

[dothawkes31]

In 1598 Elizabeth 1st decided to re vamp the church register system that her father had started in 1537, she made the registers more organised and the safe keeping and storage was a huge issue, she wanted England to have th ebest system of registration in Europe, even better than the system in Rome. She ordered that the bishop in each diocese had to visit every one of his Parishes each michaelmas, easter, christmas and St swithins 9i think it was) toi have copies made of the entries in the burial, baptism and marriage registers. These became the Bishop's transcripts, and it is because of that system and it's success that we are able to research the registers, as many books held in the Parish Church became damp, rat eaten or lost!!!! The transcripts were stored with the diocese and survived. These now form much of the IGI transcription and any Church that existed from 1597 will be insluded in the IGI.

[Ankou]

fred, some additional info.

http://homepage.ntlwo.../gendocs/city-ch.html