Great Fire of London

[BG1956]

Looking at some London parish register indices I am puzzled how they show some (although not as many as usual, admittedly) for birth, deaths and marriages that took place after the church had burned down and years before it was rebuilt.

Does anyone have any knowledge on how vicars managed to do this? Did they perform ceremonies in the open air? Did they scrounge usage of a surviving church but recorded it as if the ceremony took place in their own parish?

[ColinBignell]

There were 110 churches in the City of London in 1600, of which 40 still remain. However, just because a church no longer exists that does not mean that its parish has ceased to exist. This shows the parishes in the City of London today and, for administrative purposes, each has a parish clerk:

https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/LND/parishes

I assume that the parish clerks in 1666 would have continued to record events for their parish, even if the events were held in a different church. Today, for example, St Vedast in Foster Lane is the parish church for 13 different parishes.

[BG1956]

Makes sense. Thanks Colin.

[Bookbox]

Looking at some London parish register indices I am puzzled how they show some (although not as many as usual, admittedly) for birth, deaths and marriages that took place after the church had burned down and years before it was rebuilt.

Many parishes in the City of London were united after the Great Fire. They shared a church, but the physical delimits of each parish were observed for administrative purposes, even though the church building had been destroyed.

Some united parishes kept combined registers, others kept separate registers. For those with separate registers, events were recorded in the appropriate register according to the parish where people lived.

[BG1956]

Thanks Bookbox. Combined or separate registers didn't occur to me. Might be worth me going through  those churches that the St Sepulchre Vicar may have combined with as I have someone who I know was born in the parish but doesn't appear anywhere in the St Sepulchre registers.

I found an article on The Great Fire from 2016 in Church Times you might find interesting:-

During the rebuilding process, several parish churches erected temporary structures which they called “tabernacles”. All Hallows the More established the first of these in August 1669, financed in part by the sale of the church’s melted lead and bell metal. The term’s Nonconform­ist associations developed only in the 18th century.

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2016/2-september/features/features/alight-by-the-hand-of-god

Shame they didn't say which churches took this option!