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Indexes to Births, Marriages and Deaths
All births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales since 1 July 1837 should have been registered with the local registrar.
Indexes to these records from 1837-2005 (often called the St Catherine’s House Indexes, or RGI) can be viewed free of charge on the Ancestry web site through our Online Reference Library. It is available in all Lancashire County Library and Information Service Libraries and Lancashire Record Office. They are also available in microform in the Harris Library, Preston from 1837 to 2004. Please note that microform copies of these indexes are not available at Lancashire Record Office. From 25th March 2008 these indexes can also be seen at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU.Tel: +44 (0) 20 8876 3444. Further details can be seen on their website.
Certificates of Births, Marriages and Deaths
You can obtain copies of certificates of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales by post, or online, from the General Register Office , PO Box 2, Southport PR8 2JD (telephone 0870 603 7788/ email certificate.services@ons.gsi.gov.uk. Copies can also be obtained by contacting the local registrar of the district in which the registration took place - Lancashire Record Office or libraries can provide contact details for registrars, or see www.genuki.org.uk for details of register offices in England and Wales. For births, marriages and deaths registered in Lancashire, copies can be obtained from Lancashire Certificate Service, Quayside Court, Chain Caul Way, Docklands, Preston, PR2 2ZP; email certificateservices@env.lancscc.gov.uk ; phone 01772 326881. Certificates can also be obtained from other national registries: Scotland; the Isle of Man; Northern Ireland and Ireland. For other countries, a good source for certificate services is www.worldgenweb.org.
The General Register Office also holds the Adopted Children Register - a record of all adoptions granted by courts in England and Wales since 1927.
From December 2005, a civil partnership certificate can be obtained either from the local registration authority or centrally from the General Register Office.
There are several other websites which give online access to these indexes; Two particularly useful ones are freebmd.rootsweb.com and www.lancashirebmd.org.uk. Details of other sites can be obtained by visiting our Online Reference Library - search by using the subject categories or by doing a word search. For more information about holdings of family history sources in our libraries, please see the Guide to Lancashire Local Studies and Family History Collections.