** Warning. Some of the text on this page is now out of date, and needs revising. ** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NAMES AND ADDRESSES OF THE LOCAL SUPERINTENDENT REGISTRARS OF BIRTHS, DEATHS AND MARRIAGES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction It is possible to obtain copies of BIRTH or DEATH certificates by applying directly to the Superintendent Registrar of the centre where the birth or death was registered, without having to pay the extra search fee which St Catherine's House levies for a postal search. The saving is considerable, since at the time of writing, this latter fee is 15 pounds sterling, to be paid for ALL postal applications, regardless of whether you have an exact search reference or not. Firstly, you need to know the Registration District in which the event took place. You may have found a reference to this in a microfilm of St Catherine's House indexes, or you might want to take a chance, and apply to the Registrar where you think the event took place. Either way, the enclosed list gives you the addresses to write to in order to take advantage of this service. Please note, however, that it is the SUPERINTENDENT Registrar ONLY for a locality is able to provide this service. He, or she will at the end of each quarter, have collected together details of all events which were recorded at his District and sub-District Register Offices, for forwarding to St Catherine's House, at the same time recording the events himself, using his own filing system. It may be useful to remember that today Superintendent Registrars' Offices are usually distinguished from the minor Registration Offices as being ones who are able to perform Marriages. So if you have found a reference in the microfilm of St Catherine's Indexes, do not quote the page and folio numbers. They do not help, in fact, they are usually meaningless to the local Registrar. You should, however, quote the date of the event as precisely as you can; however, the Local Registrar will be prepared to search up to 5 years either side of the projected date for no additional fee. Long term searches are not usually undertaken. CAUTION: The above remarks apply to BIRTH and DEATH certificates ONLY! If you do not know the parish your ancestor married in, you should NOT apply for MARRIAGE certificates from a Local Registrar, as unlike Birth and Death records, Marriage records are kept separately for each PARISH. The Local Registrar may have many parishes in his area of responsibility and as you may imagine, his staff do not have the time to carry out a search of each one for a particular marriage. However, if you DO know the parish then that is a different matter; the Registrar will have only one index to search, and will most likely be happy to oblige. The cost of certificates from the local registrar is 6.00 pounds sterling (current at June, 1995) plus cost of return postage - you MUST, as with any postal application, and a matter of courtesy, always include a stamped self-addressed envelope. Cheques are usually made payable to the County, or Borough Council of the county, or town concerned. For instance, if you were applying to the Registrar in Cheltenham, you would make your cheque payable to "Gloucestershire County Council". The attached list of addresses has been gleaned from the official publication on Registrars and from the UK phone books etc, using as a basis on one compiled by a member of the North Shore Group of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists. However, all addresses - in so far as is possible - have been rechecked from their original list, and some new ones have been added, to give as far as possible a completely new, and up to date list. The Offices are listed in order of Registration District as found in St Catherine's House Indexes. Addresses for some of these places are left blank because I have been unable to ascertain a present day Registrar's Office at that location. In this case you should try to choose the nearest, based on the Registration District code. The final column on each line may have the letter "O" or "S". "O" means the Office is listed specifically in the phone book as being able to supply copies of Old Birth and Death certificates. "S" means it is listed as a Superintendent Registrar's Office. (Usually, of course it will be both). If anyone can fill in any of the gaps, I'd be more than happy to hear. Please contact me either by NetMail at 2:253/188, or on the Ireland and UK Genealogy Conference (tag I&UK_GENE) on FidoNet, or by email - rosemary@yacc.demon.co.uk. Finally, if you do need to apply by post to St Catherine's House, the office for handling postal applications is now in Southport. The address is:- The Registrar General GENERAL REGISTER OFFICE P O Box 2 Southport Merseyside PR8 2JD Tel: (+44)(0)1704 569824 The GRO will accept TELEPHONE requests and payment by CREDIT CARD. It is suggested that you make all requests as precise as possible quoting names and dates. If they are unsuccessful in searching for any given date, they will automatically scan records two years either side of the date. i.e a five year span. Thereafter, you should allow up to 28 days for a reply - thanks to David Henderson, I&UK_GENE, 15 June 1995 for this "gem", which I had been previously unaware of. DISCLAIMER ---------------------------------------------------------------------- While I have taken every care to ensure this list is as accurate as possible, I accept no liability, either expressed or implied for loss or damage as a consequence of errors or omissions. -+- Rosemary Lockie, 15th December 1994. SysOp, Wishful Thinking -+-