Record Offices: How to Find Them

Since the redrawing of county boundaries in 1974 there has been a wholesale change in the location of record offices in England and Wales. There are now many new county record offices, new archive departments (even certain divisions of the Public Record Office in London have changed location), and many consolidated and reconstituted diocesan record offices. This guide is designed to help you locate these record offices, and it contains maps to guide you to them. It also has addresses, phone numbers, a list of relevant publications, and a variety of information pertaining to each of the record offices in England and Wales. In this eighth edition the outstandingly important relocations are in Central London. The closure of the historic Public Record Office building in Chancery Lane (with transfer of all original records to Kew) and the relocation of General Registry Office records of births, marriages, and deaths has brought into being the Family Records Centre, with the G.R.O. indexes, and microfilm of census records, etc. and of P.C.C. wills.