Parish Records of St Mary-le-Tower

The Parish records are stored at the  Suffolk Record Office in Ipswich which offers a search service.
The register of baptisms dates from 1538 but the earliest surviving ones for marriages and burials go back only to1614.


e-mail address for contacting the record office in Ipswich

                                                   ipswich.ro@libher.suffolk.gov.uk




Incumbents of St Mary-le-Tower


From 1177 until 1538 the Augustinian Priory of Holy Trinity in Ipswich provided the clergy to minister at the Tower.

Thereafter the appointment to the living, which was " a Perpetual Curacy " was in the hands of the parishioners.

Nowadays the Vicar of the parish is presented by the Bishop (for three turns out of four, the Church Patronage Trust taking the fourth).


1220        Turstan                  (of Ipswich Church)

1251        Roger     chaplain

1437        Nicholas Wymbyssh or Walter Disse

1443        Andrew Woodhouse

1446        Adam Sabyn

1449        Thomas Lamberd

1451        William Clerk

1455        William Smyth

1464        John Drayll

1485        Thomas Wade

1499        Thomas Tybenham

1510        William Lark

1512        William Baron

1536        Thomas Peacock

1555        John Somerton

1555        Edmund Gooding                 (June)

1569                   Hill                         

1572

1577        George Webb                    

1582        poss. William Negus                1587 to Leigh      see Denham Classis

1587        John Ward                     

1597        John Shelton                  [curate £12 ]

1606        Nathaniel Roe

1609        Thomas Webb

1615        Thomas Nuttall                  

1616        John Ward                     

1620        John Gooding

1624        Samuel Ward                     

1627        Jonathan Skinner                               1636

1630        Richard Raymond               

1632        Samuel Ward                      again

1635        John Ashburne (Ward's son-in-law) 1636         Nullus Curatus

1637        Gawen Nash                      

1642        William Fincham

1656        John Chapman

1657               Benjamin Brunning ?               

1662        John Burrough                              

1670        Hugh Roberts

1674        Samuel? Brunning

1677        Samuel Golty                     

1678        Joseph Cutlove                

1708        Thomas Bishop DD                           

1737        Thomas Bishop junior

1778        Thomas Cobbold

1831        Francis Cobbold

1838        William Nassau Leger       later St Leger

1861        James Robert Turnock

1890        Ythil Arthur Barrington

1904        William Pigot

1915        Hamilton Douglas-Hamilton

1924        Arthur Wallace

1928        Arthur Streeten

1942        Richard Babington

1958        Basil Spurgin

1972        Geoffrey John Tarris

1982        Keith Brynmor Jones

1996        Peter K. Townley