Our aim is to eventually cover all births which took place in the pre-1974 county of Lancashire from 1837 onwards, including those in areas which have since been transferred to adjacent counties.
These records are now held at thirty-eight separate register offices:
For the purposes of registering births, Lancashire was divided into dozens of Registrar's Sub-Districts. A full list of the Sub-Districts included in the database so far can be found on the Coverage of the Birth Indexes page, which also shows the years for which the records have been indexed, and the places included within each Sub-District.
Because there are separate sets of records for each Sub-District, the dates covered will vary. But more information will be added to the database as soon as it becomes available, and the latest additions will be noted on the Updates page.
From the indexes, you can find out:
(a) The Name of the child, as shown in the registers. If the child's parents were unmarried, and both are named on the certificate, then the child should be indexed under both surnames. Some children had not been given forenames by the time of registration, and are simply recorded as 'Male' or 'Female'.(b) The Maiden Name of the mother. This does not appear against all entries since its inclusion depends upon the way in which the indexes were compiled.
(c) The Year in which the birth was registered. In some cases only a range of up to five years is indicated at present because of the way in which the indexes were originally compiled, but exact years will be provided wherever possible. Remember that the year relates to when the birth was registered, and a registration up to 42 days after the birth was permissible. This delay means, for example, that a child born in December 1849 may not have been registered until January or February 1850. In addition, some births were registered after the 42 day limit and may appear in the indexes considerably later than you might otherwise expect.
(d) The Sub-District where the birth was registered, which should be the same as where the child was born. There is a list showing the places within each Sub-District.
(e) The Register Office which now holds the records. There have been a large number of boundary changes between districts since the start of registration in 1837, and as a result many records have been moved around. The abbreviations shown for the offices are as follows:
- BL = Blackpool
- BN = Blackburn
- BO = Bolton
- BU = Burnley
- BY = Bury
- FE = Fleetwood & Fylde
- HN = Hyndburn
- LL = Liverpool
- MR = Manchester
- OM = Oldham
- PN = Preston
- PT = Prescot
- RE = Rochdale
- RI = Ribble Valley
- SD = Salford
- SS = South Sefton
- TR = Trafford (based at Sale)
- WL = Lancashire West
- WN = Wigan & Leigh
(e) The Registrar's Reference Number for the birth entry, which can be used to order the birth certificate. It is important to note that this is only applicable at the register office which holds the records, and is of no use anywhere else.
Please bear in mind that until recently the main purpose of these indexes was to supply certified copies of entries in registers. They were therefore written to help the registrar find an entry using information supplied by the applicant for the certificate. Consequently, they do not always provide information in an ideal form for family historians.
If you find an entry you are interested in, it is possible to order a birth certificate, which is a copy of the full entry from the original register. An order form may be accessed by clicking on the reference which appears against each entry in the search results. This should be printed and sent to the appropriate register office.
Applications for certified copies of the birth entries should be made to:
| Office | Address | Payments to: | Credit Cards |
| BL | Superintendent Registrar The Register Office South King Street Blackpool FY1 4AX UK |
Blackpool Borough Council | Yes |
| BN | Superintendent Registrar Register Office King Georges Hall Northgate Blackburn BB2 1AA UK |
Superintendent Registrar | No |
| BO | Bolton Register Office Mere Hall Merehall Street Bolton BL1 2QT UK |
Bolton MBC | Yes |
| BU | Lancashire Registration District Certificate Services Quayside Court Chain Caul Way Preston PR2 2ZP UK |
Lancashire County Council | Yes |
| BY | Bury Register Office Town Hall Manchester Road Bury BL9 0SW UK |
Bury MBC | Yes |
| CY | Lancashire Registration District Certificate Services Quayside Court Chain Caul Way Preston PR2 2ZP UK |
Lancashire County Council | Yes |
| FE | Lancashire Registration District Certificate Services Quayside Court Chain Caul Way Preston PR2 2ZP UK |
Lancashire County Council | Yes |
| HN | Lancashire Registration District Certificate Services Quayside Court Chain Caul Way Preston PR2 2ZP UK |
Lancashire County Council | Yes |
| LL | Liverpool City Council The Register Office The Cotton Exchange Old Hall Street LIVERPOOL L3 9UF UK |
Liverpool City Council | Yes |
| MR | Superintendent Registrar Manchester Register Office Heron House 47 Lloyd Street MANCHESTER M2 5LE UK |
Manchester City Council | Yes |
| OM | Superintendent Registrar Oldham Register Office Chadderton Town Hall Middleton Road Chadderton Oldham OL9 6PP UK |
Oldham MBC | No |
| PN | Lancashire Registration District Certificate Services Quayside Court Chain Caul Way Preston PR2 2ZP UK |
Lancashire County Council | Yes |
| PT | Superintendent Registrar Prescot Register Office Council Offices High Street Prescot L34 3LH UK |
Knowsley Borough Council | No |
| RE | Superintendent Registrar Register Office Town Hall The Esplanade Rochdale OL16 1AB UK |
Rochdale MBC | Yes |
| RI | Lancashire Registration District Certificate Services Quayside Court Chain Caul Way Preston PR2 2ZP UK |
Lancashire County Council | Yes |
| SD | Superintendent Registrar Salford Register Office Unity House Salford Civic Centre Chorley Road Swinton SALFORD M27 5AW UK |
City of Salford | Yes |
| SS | The Register Office Town Hall Great Georges Road Waterloo L22 1RB UK |
Superintendent Registrar | No |
| TR | Trafford Register Office Sale Town Hall Sale Waterside Sale Cheshire M33 7ZF U.K. |
Trafford M.B.C. | Yes |
| WL | Lancashire Registration District Certificate Services Quayside Court Chain Caul Way Preston PR2 2ZP UK |
Lancashire County Council | Yes |
| WN | Superintendent Registrar Wigan & Leigh Register Office Town Hall Library Street Wigan WN1 1YD UK |
Wigan Council | No |
Family historians are requested to apply for certificates by post and not call casually at the Register Office. Whilst staff will always try to help, they do have other statutory duties to carry out every day and are often very busy with current births, deaths and marriages. Postal applications are normally dealt with promptly as they are received.
You may also request a certificate for a birth which you believe to have been registered in a particular district but for which the registers have not yet been indexed by LancashireBMD. Write to the register office concerned quoting:
A stamped addressed envelope will help get the certificate back to you more quickly. Applications sent from outside the UK should enclose two International Reply Coupons with their self-addressed envelope instead of stamps.
The fee for each certificate is £7.00 and should be sent with the application. Cheques should be crossed "A/C Payee Only". Do Not Send Cash.
Applicants wishing to pay by credit card should include in their applications the relevant details, i.e. type of card, name of cardholder, card number and date of expiry. Please note that some Register Offices apply a surcharge of up to £1.00 for credit card payment.
No. Original records of births, marriages and deaths held at register offices in England and Wales are not open to the public, and by law information can only be released in the form of certificates issued by the registrars.
The national indexes of births in England and Wales (latterly at The Family Records Centre and previously at St. Catherine's House or Somerset House but now widely available via the internet) list all children whose birth was registered in each quarter year from 1837. They show the name of the child, the mother's maiden surname (from 1912 only), the name of the registration district (as it existed when the birth was registered), and a volume and page number, which is unique to the General Register Office and of no use to local registrars.
Every three months since July 1837, registrars have been required to send copies of their birth register entries to the General Register Office. For various reasons, sometimes entries were missed, or details were copied incorrectly from the register. Further errors and omissions have occurred when the original manuscript indexes were used to produce typescript copies. This will usually explain differences between certificates ordered from the GRO and those obtained from local register offices. Generally speaking, registers and indexes held by the local offices are less prone to error and omission, and should therefore be more accurate than those at the GRO.
A quick glance through the indexes reveals some unusual spellings of common names, and this often explains why a birth can be hard to find. In the early days of registration, and because of the high level of illiteracy, the mother or father told the name and surname to the registrar, who would spell them as he heard them. If the parents could not read or write, they would not know whether the names were being spelled consistently. For example, people looking for the Muir family may not think to look under 'Mewr', or 'Raleigh' under 'Rolli', and a degree of lateral thinking may be required.
To help overcome this problem the search pages have the ability to try to list names that sound similar but are spelled differently. Hint and tips about getting the best from the search of the indexes on this web site are available here.
As noted above, some children were still unnamed when their births were registered, and so they appear simply as 'Male' or 'Female'. Although it was possible in certain circumstances for names to be added to or altered on certificates after the initial registration, this was uncommon.
Particularly in the early years following the introduction of civil registration of births in 1837, it was not uncommon for some births to go unregistered. Some parents believed that baptism was sufficient. The number gradually declined, particularly after 1875 when penalties were introduced for those failing to register a birth.
Your ancestor may have been born outside the area. It was not unusual for mothers to give birth away from home, particularly while staying with parents or other relations. The GRO indexes may be helpful in locating where the birth took place, but please remember that a lot of records have moved around due to boundary changes between districts.
Your ancestor may have been adopted and their birth registered under the surname of their natural parent(s) rather than their adoptive parents whose surname they may have taken. There was no formal process for recording details of adoptions before 1927 (see below)
If a child was adopted, the record of its adoption would not be held at the local Register Office. Records of adoptions in England and Wales (adoptions since 1 January 1927 under the Adoption Acts) are held by the Registrar General.
A standard Adoption Certificate is a full copy of the entry in the Adopted Children Register which, instead of giving particulars of parents and birth registration, gives the date of birth (if known) and details of the adoption and adoptive parents.
Applications for Adoptions Certificates should be made in writing to: Adoptions Section, Office for National Statistics, Smedley Hydro, Birkdale, Southport, PR8 2HH.
If you know that the entry you require relates to a person who was subsequently adopted, and you wish to have a copy of the original entry, please state this in your application.
Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of these indexes, it is possible that an occasional mistake or omission can occur. If you think you have found an error then please click here to send an e-mail to the webmaster giving full details of the entry concerned including reference and year, preferably by cutting and pasting the full search result details into your message.