County Durham

Durham County Record Office
County Hall, Durham, DH1 5UL
Telephone: 03000 267619
Website: Durham Record Office

Research: Records Office online shop as there is now an easier process to order and pay for research online.https://recordofficeshop.durha m.gov.uk/pgHome

Durham County Record Office's search room closed to visitors in January 2022 because the collections are moving to a new home. 

Roughly six miles of the archives will be transferred from Durham's County Hall to the site of the new History Centre in the 19th. century Mount Oswald Manor House on the outskirts of the City.

The History Centre is scheduled to open in 2023 and will bring together archive, heritage and registration services, alongside a cafe and exhibition space.

In the meantime the archive service will continue to respond to public inquiries by email and process online requests, in addition to delivering education programmes, online history  talks and courses,  and digitisation projects. Find out more at durhamrecordoffice.org.uk.

• Dean and Chapter Library
  The College, Durham, DH1 3EH
  Telephone: (+44) (191) 386 2489
• Durham City Reference Library is now Durham Clayport Library
  Millennium Place
  Durham
  DH1 1WA
  Telephone: (+44) (191) 386 4003
• Durham University Library - Archives and Special Collections
  • Palace Green Section
    Palace Green, Durham, DH1 3RN
    Telephone: (+44) (191) 334 2972
  • Section at 5 The College
    (formerly Department of Palaeography and Diplomatic)
    5 The College, Durham, DH1 3EQ
    Telephone: (+44) (191) 334 1210
• Family history resources at
  • Gateshead Local Studies Library.
  • Newcastle Central Library
  • Tyne and Wear Archive Service
• There is a page of photographs of Beamish Museum taken by Brian Pears.
• Cleveland Archives: The Friends of Teesside Archives exist to promote and assist Teesside Archives and to promote conservation of documents etc in the Cleveland county area. Its volunteers, among other things, help with the indexing of parish records, rate books, electoral rolls and other records of interest to family and local historians.

• Newcastle Local Studies Library has a large collection of Monumental Inscriptions.

• Transcripts of the 1841, 1861, 1871 and 1891 Census Returns covering areas of Co Durham and Northumberland.
• Brian Pears has compiled tables linking Piece Numbers with Registration Districts and Sub-districts in Co Durham and Northumberland for each of the censuses from 1851 to 1911.

  • 1851 Census
  • 1861 Census
  • 1871 Census
  • 1881 Census
  • 1891 Census
  • 1901 Census
  • 1911 Census

• Durham Records Online offer a free search of almost a million County Durham census records; a fee is required to view the record transcriptions.

Methodist Churches in 1940 in the "Newcastle-upon-Tyne" and "Sunderland and Durham" Districts. This includes all of Northumberland and the northern part of Co Durham

• Detailed information on deposited registers and transcripts is given under individual parishes (see index)
• County Durham Burial Index 1813-1837 (5% Sample)
• Paul Joiner's Marriage Index for Durham, the North Riding of Yorkshire and elsewhere.
• Ted Wildy's UK Marriage witness index.
• Transcripts or indexes of about three hundred Northumberland and Durham parish registers are held in the Newcastle Local Studies Library.
• Family Search has published digitized images of Durham Diocese Bishop's Transcripts for 1613-1919.
• Family Search has published digitized images of Durham Diocese, Calendar of Marriage Bonds & Allegations, 1594-1815
• Durham Records Online offer a free search of many County Durham parish records; a fee is required to view the record transcriptions.

Certificates of birth, death and marriage can be obtained from the Superintendent Registrars at local District Register Offices (where they still exist):

If ordering from a District Office, please note the following:

• (a) the cost of a certificate is currently (June 2010) £9.00 -send a Sterling cheque payable to the Superintendent Registrar plus return postage or two International Reply Coupons;
• (b) the St. Catherine's Index references are of no value;
• (c) for marriage certificates, the precise place of marriage must be given;
• (d) Civil Registration in England and Wales began on July 1st 1837.

Registration districts for the period 1837-1930 with their accompanying places, together with the current location of the records, is listed on Brett Langston's Civil Registration Pages.

• There are online, searchable, indexes at:-
  • County Durham Register Offices
  • Gateshead Register Office
  • Sunderland Register Office
  • South Tyneside Register Office
  • Tees Valley Register Offices in the former county of Cleveland (Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Redcar & Cleveland, and Hartlepool)

Once you find an entry you can, of course, order a certificate.

• Extracts from (possibly) The Durham Chronicle entitled List of Former Executions relating to executions at Durham between 1732 and 1909 supplied by Alistair and Joan Mills.
• Extracts from the Newcastle Courant relating to Criminals and Crime 1782-1789 and 1830-1851 supplied by George Bell

• North of England Regional Information Service, an initiative developed by N.I.A.A., the Northern Informatics Applications Agency.
• The Northumbria Tourist Board
• Sense of Place North East(SoPNE) is a group of projects about the North East of England.
  The site is "a gateway to images and sounds that give an insight into what makes the North East special. It is a portal to learning resources about the people, culture, history, landscape, and nature of the North East."
  The four projects under the Sense of Place North East are: FARNE, Folk Archive Resource North East,    IMAGINE, Images Museums And Galleries In the North East,   Northumberland Communities

• A list of Trade Directory Holdings in Northern Libraries.
• Microfiche copies of many local directories are available from North Fiche

• Ship's passenger lists with Durham connections:-
  • Emigrant
  • Lizzie Webber
  • Saldanha

• John Fuller has provided full details of the mailing lists serving the county - NORTHUMBRIA-L and DUR-NBL-L. This is but a small part of the data available on the "Genealogy Resources on the Internet " pages maintained by John and Chris Gaunt.
• The Durham Look-up Exchange (No link) Volunteers are offering look-ups in various research references.
• Details of a mailing list for people with genealogical or historical interests in Durham and Northumberland.

• Gateshead Libraries local history project with lots of local history information and photographs from Gateshead and the villages in the Gateshead MBC area. These include bits for Gateshead, Gateshead Fell, Lamesley and Whickham
• The Durham Victoria County History's new website. Most of the historical information on it at present is about Darlington, but they will be covering the whole county eventually.
• Managed by Information North, the regional agency for library co-operation, the Tomorrow's History project will be digitising tens of thousands of images and documents from the collections of libraries, museums and archives inthe North East region, linking these to modern and historic Ordnance Survey mapping, providing links to existing indexes, catalogues and content, and stimulating one hundred new Community History initiatives for the new Millennium.
• Brian Pears has created a page "Some Remnants of Victorian Gateshead" containing photographs of historical Gateshead.
• The Keys to the Past website "provides access to a complete record of the archaeologyof the two counties [the modern counties of Northumberland and Co Durham], from the smallest prehistoric flint to the largest medieval castle." Note that the Metropolitan Districts of Newcastle, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland, and the Unitary Authorities of Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees are not covered.

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  David Harrison has provided an 1806 map of Co Durham (from J. Carey's engraving). A reduced-size version is also available. Please note that the image on these pages is of 147 kilobytes.
• Thanks to NORTHUMBRIA subscriber, Ray Rogers, we now have an 1840 Co Durham map online.
• GENUKI have provided a list of illustrations showing the coverage of the modern OS Landranger sheets.
• Reproductions of old Ordnance Survey maps for many areas of North-EastEngland are available from Alan Godfrey Maps.
• Peter Dockerty has produced a new website showing maps of waggonways and mines in County Durham.

• Roll of Honour of civilians killed by enemy action in the UK during World War II - listing of 3736 entries relating to Northumberland, Durham and Yorkshire.
• Recipients of the Victoria Cross associated with the north-east of England.
• The North East War Memorials Project provides transcriptions, images and information on war memorials in the region.
• There is a Durham at War website
  This is a Heritage Lottery funded WW1 centenary project dedicated to mapping the story of County Durham and its people in the First World War. The site incorporates free access to 25 inch to the mile historic mapping of the historic county, derived from the 2nd revision (3rd edition) Ordnance Survey of 1914-1919. The website will be live until the end of 2018 and online log-in to add information to the site will be coming soon.

• Here is a surnames list, complete with location index, compiled by Graham Jaunay, cataloguing the Northumberland & Durham-related research interests of a number of Internet and CompuServe users.

• Newcastle Local Studies Library has a large collection.
• There is an Index to Evening Chronicle Obituaries 1885-1900 provided by Kathleen Bolam. This is an ongoing project and should be added to in due course.

• A list of collieries in Northumberland and Durham.
• Lists of:-
  • Coal Mines of Durham (North) in 1896
  • Coal Mines of Durham (South) in 1896
  • Metalliferous Mines of Durham in 1896
  • Salt Wells of Durham and the North Riding in 1896 provided by the Peak District Mines Historical Society Ltd.

• Pre-1858 wills which were proved at the Consistory Court of Durham are kept at Durham University - Library Archives and Special Collections.
• There is a Pre 1858 Probate Index newly on line.

There is a large, well organised and informative Durham Diocesan web site which gives full details of the present ecclesiastical set up of the Diocese, together with some historical detail.

• The Northern Police Orphanage at St George’s House, Otley Road, Harrogate looked after children of police families, mostly from North-East England. It was founded by Catherine Gurney in 1898 and closed in 1956. The first admission was Minnie Smith from Sunderland.

Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs to 1516 was compiled by Dr Samantha Letters at the Centre for Metropolitan History, and is organised by county. It includes a brief summary of the early history of many large and small places, with details of markets and fairs and the people granted the right to hold them.

The site "Village Games" by Colonel Alex Johnson describes games which Alex remembers from his childhood in NW Co Durham in the 1920s and 30s.

• Cleveland FHS
• Northumberland & Durham FHS

• Listing of Electoral Registers and Poll Books at Newcastle Local Studies Library.