Doncaster Family History Society

The village of Hooton Pagnell, with its stone-built cottages and farmhouses, is one of the most picturesque in the Doncaster area. It has for centuries been a community largely dominated by the principal landowner, the owner of Hooton Pagnell Hall. Since the late seventeenth century, this has been the Warde (now Warde-Norbury) family, They are the descendants of Sir Patience Warde (1629-1696), a townsman of Pontefract, whose successful career in commerce led to his selection as master of the Merchant Tailor’s company and then as lord mayor of London in 1680. The ancient core of the hall appears to have been a medieval peel tower, although the house was greatly enlarged in the late eighteenth century, (partly to designs by William Lindley of Doncaster), and substantially modified in the early twentieth century for Mrs Sarah Julia Warde-Aldam, probably from the profits of her coal-mining royalties from Frickley colliery.

The church, dedicate to All Saints, in origin a Norman structure, ‘restored’ by J. M. Neale in the 1870s, lies close to the hall, as it does in other ‘estate’ villages in the area, such as Brodsworth, Hickleton, High Melton, Owston, Skelbrooke and Sprotbrough. The close links between church and hall - squire and parson - are reflected in the fact that some of the parish records, principally the settlement certificates, are now to be found amongst the archives of the estate. Details of these can be found in Pamela Lindley, Settlement Certificates in the Archdeaconry of Doncaster 1692-1846, published by Doncaster and District Family History Society in 2000. 

Doncaster Archives holds some of the archives of the Warde-Norbury family of Hooton Pagnell, and the following records of Hooton Pagnell, All Saints : 

Baptisms 1538-1875 Marriages 1569-1985 Burials 1569-1959 Banns 1824-1933
Index : Baptisms 1538-1875 Marriages 1569-1836 Burials 1569-1812
Bishop’s transcripts 1602-1858