Speaker: Ted Udall

Parish Registers are an amazing snapshot of life in a local area. These handwritten books, usually kept in the parish church, contain details of weddings, baptisms and funerals. From them, it’s possible to find out who lived where in a Parish and what was happening locally at any given time.

The Registers were introduced in England and Wales in 1538 – and, bearing in mind that ten-yearly censuses were not introduced until 1841, the importance of Parish Registers cannot be overstated! If you are doing any sort of research into your family antecedents, then you are bound to have frequent recourse to parish registers.