Family Records Centre

51°31′37″N 0°6′27″W / 51.52694°N 0.10750°W / 51.52694; -0.10750

It opened in March 1997 and was fully operational by the following month. It was situated at 1 Myddelton Street, Clerkenwell, London, close to the London Metropolitan Archives. It closed in 2008.

Throughout the FRC, there was free access to a wide range of family history material, databases and internet websites. Staff were always available to provide help and advice on family history research and there were regular one-to-one family history surgeries and computer skills tutorials. Talks on family history topics took place every week and other events, including exhibitions and conferences, were organised. There were good facilities for customers with special needs, and there was a small bookshop next to the entrance on the ground floor and a refreshment area with vending machines and lockers for personal belongings in the basement.

Its main resources were indexes to civil registration of births, marriages and deaths on the ground floor (provided by the GRO), and the Victorian census returns on the first floor (provided by The National Archives).

Births, Marriages & Deaths Indexes

The births, marriages and deaths indexes were in large, heavy, hardcover books (red covers for births, green for marriages and black for deaths) in three sections respectively, with each section arranged in date order. Using the details from an index, a copy (certificate) of the corresponding birth, marriage or death entry could be applied for at the cashiers' section on the same floor. Other indexes at the FRC included some births, marriages and deaths of British nationals which took place abroad from 1761, indexes of legal adoptions in England & Wales from 1927 onwards, and various indexes of war deaths in the armed forces in South Africa, both World Wars and elsewhere.

The births, marriages and deaths indexes were originally at

Before the FRC opened, the census microfilms were at the Public Record Office (now part of the National Archives) in Chancery Lane for some years, after having been moved from the Land Registry building, Portugal Street, London, where they had been since the mid-1970s.

Other microfilm resources

Other microfilm resources available included wills and administrations from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury up to 1858, which could also be searched online, death duty registers, from 1796 to 1858, and many nonconformist registers (mainly pre-1837).

Demise

On 21 June 2006, it was announced that the National Archives' staff and residual services at the FRC would be relocating to the

The closure date was later brought forward to early 2008.[4]

The ground floor (GRO section) of the FRC closed on 27 October 2007^[3] and the rest of the FRC closed on 15 March 2008.

References

External links

• Family Records Centre
• UKBMD - Births, Marriages and Deaths on the Internet
• FreeBMD - GRO indexes online
• GRO article, 6 March 2008: Library scheme widens access to family records^{[permanent dead link]}