Greater London Marriage Index

With each result, you will receive a transcript. The transcripts have been created by various family history societies. A number of records will also include an image. These images have been captured from registers held by the College of Arms. The detail found in each transcript will vary, but many will include these key facts.

• Name

• Marriage year

• Marriage place

• Residence

• Occupation

• Spouse’s name

• County and country

Transcripts for St Andrew Holborn parish were created by the Society of Genealogists and will include additional facts such as;

• Marital status

• Whether the register was signed

• Spouse’s marital status

• Spouse’s residence

• Banns or licence

• Officiant’s name

• Witness names

Images

Images are available for the marriage held by the College of Arms for St James Duke’s Place, Gray’s Inn Chapel, Austin Friars Dutch Reform Church, The Temple Church, and Somerset House Chapel. Images can provide you will additional facts about your ancestor such as;

• Titles

• Notation of the individual’s marital status (w – widow and s – spinster)

• Age

• Career achievements

• Parents’ names

• Death date

The Greater London marriage index is a vast collection of marriage records found in London and its surrounding areas. It includes records from London, Middlesex, Surrey, and Hertfordshire. The collection has been created through contributions from the Society of Genealogists, Docklands Ancestors, and West Middlesex Family History Society. Findmypast has created more than 90,000 transcripts from original registers held by the College of Arms.

Within the records, you will find registers from St Andrew Holborn, the largest of Sir Christopher Wren's London parish churches and stands at the western end of Holborn Viaduct by Holborn Circus. London’s East End is represented in the registers from Stepney, Whitechapel, and Bromley.

Many of the records found in this collection have been available on Findmypast under other titles: Middlesex marriage index West Middlesex marriage index London, Docklands and East End marriages, 1558-1859 St Andrew's Holborn marriage index 1754-1812

These records are some of the oldest London marriage records found on Findmypast. Over 90,000 records have been created from original registers held by the College of Arms, the official heraldic authority for England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and much of the Commonwealth. The records include marriages from St James Duke’s Place, Gray’s Inn, Austin Friars Dutch Reform Church, the Temple Church, and Somerset House from 1502 to 1871. Austin Friars if the oldest Protestant Dutch language church in the world

The historic county Middlesex rests in southeast England. The county name originates from the 5th century when the Saxons colonised the region and gave it the name Middle Saxon. It is naturally bordered by the rivers Colne to the west, the Thames to the south and Lea to the east, then by a ridge of hills to the north known as Grim’s Ditch.

It included parts of London, Surrey and Hertfordshire. The county was largely agricultural, producing grain, hay and building materials. It became increasingly urbanised by the growing suburbs of London. In 1887 the county’s population was only second to Lancashire. Much of its population was concentrated in the London area.

Middlesex Day

16th May is known as Middlesex Day to mark the valiant achievements of the 57th (West Middlesex) Regiment of Foot during the Peninsular War. In 1811 at the Battle of Albuhera the 57th Regiment, fighting as part of the British forces under the Duke of Wellington, stopped the advancement of the French force into Portugal. The men fought ferociously against Napoleon’s army and showed great examples of courage and chivalry. During the height of the battle the commanding officer, Colonel Inglis was heard calling out, “Die hard, 57th, die hard.’ The Middlesex Regiment is still known as the ‘Diehards’ today.

Famous people who married in Middlesex

In the records, we can find the marriage of James Maxse to Lady Caroline Berkeley on 24 December 1829 at Cranfield. Lady Caroline was the daughter of Frederick Augustus Berkeley, the 5th Earl of Berkeley. The family became a well-established merchant-family and the couple were often seen at large dinners and soirees. Life for aristocrats during the Victorian era was ubiquitous with grandeur and decadence. The lives and fashion of nobility were often reported by newspapers.

In the Findmypast newspaper collection, we can follow the social life of the couple. On 20 September 1842 the Morning Post reported, ‘‘The Earl and Countess of Chesterfield, Colonel and Mrs Anson, Lord Forester, the Hon. C. Forester, Mr. and Lady Caroline Maxse, and other fashionables are expected to embark for the Netherlands about the middle of October, on a continental tour for four months.’ Five years later we can read in the Morning Post that the couple were entertained by the Earl of Cardigan. ‘The Earl of Cardigan entertained at dinner on Saturday evening, at his mansion in Portman-square, the Marquis and Marchioness of Worcester, Lord and Lady Poltimore, Mr. and Lady Rose Lovell, Mr. and Lady Caroline Maxse, Lady Mary Berkeley.’ Many more are listed as having attended the evening. Explore the Findmypast newspaper collection and discover reports of your ancestors today.

The East End of London is the area to the east of the walled Roman and Medieval City of London and north of the River Thames. Originally the population lived in villages that clustered around the city walls, farmland and small communities down by the river serving the needs of shipping and the Royal Navy.

Until the arrival of formal docks all goods had to be landed in the Pool of London, a stretch of the Thames running from London Bridge to below Limehouse, but industries based on construction and repair of ships flourished in the East End from Tudor times. The area was always somewhere that immigrants to London settled. In the 17th century, Huguenot refugees settled in Spitalfields, to be followed by Irish weavers and other ethnic groups, many of whom came in search of work in the blossoming clothing industry there.

With a huge growth in population with people coming from the British countryside as well as further afield and a large percentage of semi-skilled and unskilled workers, the area was not a wealthy one. Social reformers arrived in the area in the mid-18th century leading to, by the end of the century, unions and workers’ associations being formed in the area. The area contributed to the formation of the Labour Party and suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst based campaigns for women’s rights there and organised the first Communist Party in England there.

The church of St Andrew Holborn is the largest of Sir Christopher Wren's London parish churches and stands at the western end of Holborn Viaduct by Holborn Circus. It also served one of the biggest parishes in London (it actually spanned the boundary of London and Middlesex) out of which five new parishes were eventually formed.

The registers are large and contain many thousands of entries, as the parish has always been a popular place to marry. More significantly, the entries from the marriage registers do not appear on the International Genealogical Index or in Boyd's Marriage Index. Pallot's Marriage index has entries for 1780-1837 but these only give the year and omit many of the details from the original registers. It is for these reasons that the Society of Genealogists decided to embark a project to transcribe and index the registers in 2003.

This index is a finding aid and users should always refer back to the original material. An interesting idiosyncrasy of this parish is that after 1754 two sets of registers were kept and the registers for marriages by licence are separated from those by banns. Around two thirds of the marriages were by banns and one third by licence.

The original registers are held at the Guildhall, because the parish church itself is in the City. Microfilmed copies of both sets of registers are kept at the Guildhall and the Society of Genealogists' Library. The London Metropolitan Archives has microfilm copies of the registers for marriages by banns only.