Where Were Parish Registers Kept In England?

Originally, when they were first begun in 1538, all parish registers were kept at the parish church. Each church had a very large, usually black wooden chest into which the parish priest would put all the important papers, including the bound vellum books that he used to record baptisms, marriages and burials.

Very early priests and some later ones were not very organised and often kept notes of burials and baptisms on scraps of paper, intending to write them into the register later. They forgot and this explains many of the gaps that appear in registers.

Some registers are very neat with separate books kept for baptisms, marriage and burials but others are jumbled up and may have burials on one page, baptisms on another for the same year. Some vicars wrote one event at the back of the book, usually upside down from the event at the front.

The Parish Chest, as the wooden box became known, was kept in the vestry of the church and was usually kept locked. Some parish registers have been lost over time because the vestry could be a damp and cold room, not the ideal conditions to preserve books for hundreds of years.