All Saints' Church Records

The first baptism at All Saints' occurred on June 16th, 1844, when the son of Mary and John Langdridge, a shoemaker, of Worth, was christened Frederick John. The officiating Minister was the Rev. C. J. Sandilands.

The first two baptismal registers provide information about the date of baptism, Christian name, the full names of both parents, abode, quality, trade or profession, and the name of the person conducting the ceremony. The third register, started in 1914, referred for the first time to the candidate's 'alleged age' and a further change occurred in the 1986 register, with a request for the names of the Godparents.

Using the baptism rate as a proxy for the birthrate (a more reliable link before, say, 1960, than later) it would seem that there was no appreciable increase in births during the First World War although the figures for 1916-17 are somewhat distorted by the baptism, in a single ceremony, of two males and five females from one family - the father being a farmer of Crawley Down.

The first baptism at All Saints' occurred on June 16th, 1844, when the son of Mary and John Langdridge, a shoemaker, of Worth, was christened Frederick John. The officiating Minister was the Rev. C. J. Sandilands. In all, eight fathers are listed as "soldiers" in the baptism records during the First World War, the first of these entries being in 1916. Six of these fathers were parishioners of All Saints' Church, although their address is recorded as "with the British Armies in the Field". None of their names appears consequently on the Roll of Honour in the Church and it is to be hoped that they survived the War to enjoy family life with their children. During the Second World War, the numbers of baptisms remained steady, but increased in 1947 and 1948 before decreasing from 1949 until the considerable increase in the size of the village and its population began to have an impact in the 1970s.

In addition to indicating birthrate trends (at least until recently), it is also possible to gain from the baptism registers an idea of the incidence of illegitimacy. There are, too, several poignant entries in the early records where it may be seen that a new baby had been given the name of a deceased sibling, in some cases only for that child, too, to die in infancy.

The changes in occupation over the past 150 years, as deduced from the baptism and marriage records, are similar and are discussed under the latter heading. The most popular names recorded between 1844 and 1854 shows that they are ones still likely to appear in any list drawn up in 1993 by reference to the birth columns of national newspapers. They are:

Fifty years later the choice of names had widened somewhat, but the older favourites remained with one or two additions:

A further 50 years on the picture had changed again, with many of the old favourites disappearing:

In more recent years the range has become very wide and an analysis would be extremely difficult.