Blog
11 Jul 2012Findmypast.co.uk launches the Canterbury Collection
We are pleased to announce the launch of the Canterbury Collection on findmypast.co.uk
The collection comprises 128,000 images of Church of England parish baptisms, marriages, banns and burials for churches in the historic Archdeaconry of Canterbury.
These images cover the vast period 1538-2005.
You can browse the images by parish, event and year range. When you select a parish from the drop-down list on the search page, you’ll see the type of event (baptism, marriage, bann or burial) for each parish, as well as the dates that the records cover.
This is different to our usual search facility – we’re working on an enhanced records search, which will be available in the autumn. We created the browse function because we wanted to make these images available to you as soon as possible as an interim measure.
We are working in association with Canterbury Cathedral Archives to bring you the Canterbury Collection.
Find out more about the Canterbury Collection
Browse the Canterbury records now
Hi
Do you have a list of the parishes cover by this new collection and the time periods for each parish?
Thanks
Linda
Hi Linda,
The easiest way to find out the coverage of the records is to go to the search screen – when you select a parish from the drop-down list, the event (baptism, marriage, bann or burial) will automatically populate, as will the date range the records cover. Some parishes have more than one event and date range to search:
http://www.findmypast.co.uk/search/life-events-bmds/canterbury/browse-images/
Hope this helps!
Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)
I have successfully used this new facility, especially for St John in Thanet [Margate] but unfortunately two of the parishes I need – Boughton Aluph and Boughton Malherbe do not seem to be covered even though they are East Kent Parishes. Please could you tell me if there is a reason for this omission, especially as the archives are not re-opening until Jan 2013 at the earliest?
Many thanks
Pat
Hi Pat,
Unfortunately, while Boughton Aluph and Boughton Malherbe are in East Kent, they are not within the Archdeaconry of Canterbury. This project involves online publication of the records of parishes within the Archdeaconry of Canterbury only (and not those within the Archdeaconries of Ashford or Rochester).
We hope to be publishing additional records for Kent in the not too distant future – we’ll let you know further details as soon as we can.
Many thanks,
Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)
Thank you for the new raw data from the Canterbury Collection. Very useful, but frustrating because of the lack of any kind of indexing, but I can see you will add something more in the Autumn. Please be more specific about what is – or will be – included. A lot of Canterbury Archdeaconry Parishes are up till now missing. Some of the books are in the wrong Parishes, and MANY of the descriptions of the titles/contents/years covered in the search screen are inaccurate. Also the Parish listings are inconsistent. Please can we have them listed alphabetically by parish name, then church, then accurate contents. Would be great.
Hi Robert,
We’re working on a full search, like our other parish records search, which we hope to make available in the near future. Is it possible that the records you’re after fall within the Archdeaconry of Ashford? Ashford has been split out from Canterbury recently, so none of its parishes are included in these records.
Some parishes may appear to be missing because they are modern creations and their records don’t comply with the data protection thresholds agreed for this collection with the archive. For example, Aylesham St Peter baptisms start in 1928 and marriages in 1930, so these are out of scope.
We’re looking into adding several extra parishes to the collection, such as Hythe St Leonard, more details of which will follow later.
Hope this clarifies a few things for you.
Thanks,
Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)