My BURGUM ancestors can be found in the Flaxley parish registers from 1724 until 1760 (spelt Bergum in the registers). However, Flaxley St Mary Church was not built until 1856. It is stated in the British History Online that there was initially a chapel, standing before the abbey gate in 1253, which was probably on a different site to the later parish church. It says a parish church was served by a curate from the late 1600th century and that by 1695 there was a church house next to Flaxley Abbey.

So is there information or a map of the location of the chapel and/or the church before St Marys was built in 1856. My Isaac Taylor map of 1777 does show a church in front of the Abbey, but is this one on or near the existing church? Flaxley Chapel (or church) was conducting burials at least a century before St Marys was built. So where is that churchyard? Is there any specific information about the church before 1856 and was it on the same site, or close by?

The BURGUM men were iron workers (forgemen) during the eighteenth century before moving to other locations in the Forest of Dean. Baden Watkins once gave me a tour of Flaxley Abbey and then arranged for someone to show me some of the remains of the furnace and forges not far from the house. I don't know where they lived in Flaxley, but was amazing to see where they worked!

Doug Burgum