Genealogy Chat

Can any of you experienced researchers tell me how one goes about seeking out wills in the U.K?

What time period are you dealing with?

If you look at the getting started article on the home page here it gives you the basic useful info. If you KNOW there is a will or you want to have a check on a name: There are SOME wills up to 1858 available on line at National Archives documents on line and you can download them immediately for £3.50. Before that you can go to Holborn in London or write to York (all these addys are on the getting started info) and send a cheque for a fiver - but you need to know the likely year etc. There is also some other London wills available on line - Merrys thread about this is some pages back now and they are earlier ones. You could put the word Wills in the search box at the top of this page and bring up many threads which may help.

Pre 1858 wills are scattered all over the place, as they were proved in church courts, rather than civil. The main division was Canterbury (south of the country) or York for the northern province. Both of these areas were further subdivided into smaller and smaller ecclesiastical districts - there is no co-ordinating index as there is for after 1858. Jay

Thanks to you all for the information. I know I'll always learn lots with any question I put to you. I did not have any special time in mind, or place, but I haven't started with wills yet, so just wanted a bit of an idea. Most of what I want will be in Gloucestershire, with me in Australia. Do you class Gl as south??

Gloucestershire is really the midlands I guess -its a difficult one to define - I once got a slap for saying it was the west country! Anyone know what it is officially? If you look on a map, look at Birmingham and then follow southwards.

I think it depends where you live as to where you'd classify it as being. For instance I live in North Yorkshire so anything south of Leeds is 'South'. Isn't anything above or below the Watford gap defined as beingNorth/South - or is that just another load of rubbish I've picked up as being true?

Fay, Basically if after 1858 it's York probate office for postal applications. Prior to that, for Gloucestershire, the Gloucestershire County record office would be a good starting place - although they may not all be there. Have a look at the pre 1858 PCC wills on National Archive site, also google name of interest on a2a for all counties (unless it's a name like ABLE, LOFT and STOCKS, when you get every ref for anyone who is able to do anything, or had a hayloft or was put in stocks/had stocks and shares!!!) Jay

You could try the local Archives in the area they lived. Lincoln Archives has a good index of wills for the Lincolnshire area.They hold copies of original wills & transcribed copies of wills after 1858. June x

Fay You might be lucky and find some of your people mentioned here:- http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/GLS/ProbateRecords/index.html There are similar sites for some other counties. Gwyn

I would count Gloucester as being 'south' for the purpose of looking for a will. The divide between the York records and the London ones is round about Derbyshire. If you can't find what you are looking for on the National Archives indexes, you could write to or e-mail the Gloucestershire Records Office (finding their contact details on Google!) to see if they have an index for the area. I have had quite a lot of my copies of wills from the National Archives, but also some as photocopies from local records offices. When one arrived, it even had some other family papers with it, including a copy of a letter written by my rellie in the early 1800's!!

Hi Fay Genuki has a link to some Glos Wills summaries which have been submitted by individuals (I've put some of mine on there). The link below is to surnames beginning with H, but I'm sure you'll work out how to get to other letters. Hope it's of some interest/use to you and others. Pam http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/GLS/ProbateRecords/WillsH.html