ANCESTRY'S LONDON DIGITALISATION PROGRAMME AND SURREY BISHOPS' TRANSCRIPTS
Ancestry's The London Digitalisation Programme aims to index and put images onto the internet of parish registers deposited at the London Metropolitan Archives or the Guildhall Library. Westminster and Surrey rural parishes are included in the project where the London Metropolitan Archives hold the Bishops Transcripts (the annual copies of registers made to the local Bishop). Not all Bishop Transcripts for all years however survive and many were never made in the first place.
PROJECT LINK If deposited the parish registers of areas now in London but formerly in Surrey before 1889 are held at the London Metropolitan Archives. These would be the Church of England registers for churches in the modern day London boroughs of
LAMBETH, SOUTHWARK, and WANDSWORTH
In time, all the deposited Church of England registers and some non-conformist registers for these areas should appear on the Ancestry website.
Other records for the parishes still part of the present day county of Surrey, or parts of Surrey that were incorporated into Greater London in 1965 (CROYDON, KINGSTON UPON THAMES, MERTON, SUTTON and RICHMOND) are also appearing on the Ancestry website. Most of these records are likely to be Bishops Transcripts and not images of the actual registers themselves. If these parish registers have been deposited, they would be held at the Surrey History Centre, which is not part of Ancestry’s Digitalisation Project.
Coverage on Ancestry may be very limited with only a few years surviving from the Bishops Transcripts (or perhaps only a few years yet indexed and placed on the website by Ancestry) so it is necessary to check carefully. When Bishops Transcripts were copied from the actual registers errors or omissions could be made, so it is always best to view the actual register or the microfilm of it. The LDS have many family history centres around the world and you can order microfilms to view from them for a small charge.
The
LDS CATALOGUE for Surrey parishes. Family Search/International Genealogical Index can also be based on BTs and not always parish registers. The catalogue indicates which it is.
West Surrey Family History Society's guide to
BISHOP TRANSCRIPTS gives much more detail on the survival rate of BTs in Surrey which unfortunately are not particularly good.
The records on the Ancestry website are indexed under the following '
Boroughs'.
ELMBRIDGE
Byfleet
Cobham
Esher
FRIMLEY AND CAMBERLEY
Frimley
GUILDFORD
Ash
Compton
MOLE VALLEY
Dorking
REIGATE AND BANSTEAD
Gatton
TANDRIDGE
Caterham
Crowhurst
WAVERLEY
Frensham
Godalming
PARISHES NOT A BOROUGH
A very large group of Surrey parishes are included under this heading, ordered alphabetically by church not by place
Valda
co-moderator Surrey
