How Findmypast's parish records can transform your family history

1-2 minute read

By Niall Cullen | February 20, 2020

When it comes to online church records for the UK, we won't be beaten.

Church or parish records are some of the best resources you can use to take your family tree back further. In many cases, you'll be able to go as far back as the 1500s, when King Henry VIII was on the throne. These records were taken by church officials in every corner of Britain and cover the most important milestones in your family's history.

With parish records, you can unearth details on your ancestors' baptisms, marriages and burials. They also usually include information about other family members like parents, making it easy to jump back an additional generation in your family tree with a single record.

With the largest collection of UK parish records online, Findmypast is the place to go for these genealogy staples. Many of our collections are made up of exquisite, full-colour, digitised images of the original registers and are simple to unearth with our powerful search tools.

An excerpt from our Staffordshire Baptisms.

The parish records on Findmypast cover every corner of the British Isles and many of them are exclusive. So, if you've got lineage in Leicestershire or heritage in Hertfordshire, you need us to help trace it.

View the map in detail.

Wherever your roots lie in the UK or Ireland, our parish records can help you find out more about them and extend them back much further than you ever thought possible. Use these quick links to access any of our 15 exclusive collections.

Note: the links will take you to a page for searching baptism records. You can access equivalent pages for marriages and burials via the useful links and resources list on each page.

Cheshire parish records
Devon parish records
Hertfordshire parish records
East Kent parish records - an exclusive tranche of records in a wider collection
England Roman Catholic parish records - explore exclusive records from Hertfordshire, Lancashire, Middlesex, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Surrey, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Yorkshire (East and North Ridings)
Leicestershire parish records
Lincolnshire parish records
Rutland parish records
Scotland Roman Catholic parish records
Shropshire parish records
Staffordshire parish records
Wales parish records - there are separate collections available for each county
West Kent parish records - an exclusive tranche of records in a wider collection
Westminster parish records

Is your ancestral home missing from our list of exclusives? Visit the A-Z of records to find hundreds of other parish record collections covering all of the UK or take your search to Ireland with original parish registers from the entire island.