Civil registration in England and Wales began in 1837 and it is relatively easy (if a little expensive and slow) to obtain a copy of a birth, marriage or death certificate from the GRO (General Register Office). Prior to 1837, it was the church that was solely responsible for logging vital records in registers in every parish. So, if you are researching your ancestors in England, you are going to need to find English Parish Registers. Unfortunately, there is not one place where all the records are kept; the historical physical registers are usually now kept in the county archives.
Many records are available online (mostly transcriptions) and some are free to access on the Family Search website. The subscription sites have many more records online, probably the most comprehensive pre-1837 collection is on The Genealogist website.
To help you locate English parish registers, I have posted a link table in the resources section on this website.
This table lists the historic counties of England with links to all the county archive websites. Some archives (such as Essex) have scanned all of the parish registers and these are available online either on their own website or on one of the subscription sites.
There are also links to the Family History Society sites for each county. Many of these societies have online shops where you can buy transcriptions of parish registers on discs. Some societies also have researchers available (usually for a small fee) to look up records for you.
I have posted links to the main free online collections available on the Family Search site. It is also worth looking at what other records they have in their general England collection.
The last three columns have links to the relevant collections held by the three main subscription sites.
Click here to access the English Parish Register Guide
For further reading on English parish registers, check out:
Click here to see it on Amazon
Please see my other posts for Welsh, Scottish and Irish church records.
And for a good look at the actual registers see: A Guide to British Parish Registers
These other genealogy books may also be of interest:
For more genealogy books, see the Resources section.
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Many Berkshire PRs transcripts are on findmypast. These have been provided by Berkshire FHS and were one of the first PRs to be placed on FMP. I know because I was working in conjunction with the Federation of Family History Societies and FMP at this time following FMPs take over of the now closed familyhistoryonline site more than a decade ago. Berks FHS are regularly adding to their data on FMP.
Thanks for the heads up Gillian; I don’t know why I missed Berkshire on FMP. I have added a link to the directory for Berkshire Baptisms at FMP. Thanks again.