Record Atlas
2 eras · 1538–2026 · 1,713 places

England and Wales

Chew Magna, Bristol, Chatham — and every English parish. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1538–1837 England — the parish register Findmypast · Ancestry · FamilySearch · The National Archives — Discovery

Thomas Cromwell ordered every parish to keep a register in 1538, and until 1837 it is the record. THE TRAP is where it lives: parish registers are held by COUNTY record offices, not nationally — Somerset's at Taunton, Kent's at Maidstone — and each licensed its images to a different commercial site.
1837–2026 England and Wales — civil registration General Register Office (England and Wales) · FreeBMD / FreeREG / FreeCEN · Findmypast · The National Archives — Discovery

Civil registration begins 1 JULY 1837. THE TRAP is that the GRO index gives you a reference, not a record: you order and pay for the certificate. FreeBMD indexes the same thing for nothing. And registration was not the parent's legal duty until 1875, so the first four decades are incomplete by design.

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1538–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

1,713 places on this ground

The 200 carrying the most collections are listed; 1,513 more stand on this ground. Every place has them all.

200 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

…and 140 more.

All record regions · The map