Anglican parish registers

All pre-1813 registers are available in published form either as books or microfiche. The Parish Register Transcripts and microfiche are prepared from master copies made, often in wartime, using poor quality paper. The copies we supply are the best that can be produced given the limitations of the originals Bedfordshire Parish Register Series

With regard to the original parish registers that we hold, there will usually be surrogate copies available, such as a microfiche or microfilm version or a Bishop's Transcript and as such, the original registers are not accessible without the permission of the County Archivist, and usually only if there is no surrogate copy.

As registers are deposited with us on a regular basis, keeping an up-to-date list can be difficult, but all of them are listed on our online catalogue (but not the contents) so with the guidance below you can access a full and up-to-date list of what baptism, marriage, burial and banns registers we hold for each parish.

Each parish is given a number based on the order that they were deposited with us and all have the prefix P for 'parish' so for example Bedford St Paul is P1, Ampthill is P30, Wootton is P3.  If you go to our online catalogue and put P.../1/ into the 'reference' search box, you will get a full list of all the original registers that we hold for that particular parish.  You can find a full list of all the parishes and their reference numbers here