The Briston Primitive Methodist Circuit was formed from that at Aylsham in 1845. The Circuit was quite extensive in covergae; those looking for missing folk in an area bounded by the market towns of Fakenham and Holt and roughly from the line of A1067 (Norwich to Fakenham road) northwards to the coast. There are quite a few entries from the fishing ports of the North Norfolk coast as well as many of the villages around and about Briston itself.

During the period of this transcript two registers have been completed, the first a standard 800 entry parish register is filmed on Microfilm MF1601 in the Norfolk Record Office collection. The filiming is recent and of good quality - but as with all non-conformist registers the standard of handwriting is well below that of the Anglican clerics. This register is a numbered book and those sequence numbers are used to enable fast location of the original entries. The second register is also a standard parish register book but is un-numbered, in this instance the numbers against each entry merely represent the sequence the entry was found within the book. The second register is filmed on Microfilm MF1775 and the cooments applicable to the earlier register also apply.

In common with many non-conformist registers the books appear to be compilations of several priests' own records with the date sequence jumping around all over the place. Users should bear in mind that this later compilation itself may have introduced errors to the book. Wherever possible I have tried to comply with the original spelling of names - there are some very original spellings present as a result.