Primitive Methodist registers: how to access them

The practice of the Methodist Church is to deposit registers which are no longer in use in the local record offices. In most cases this happens when the chapel has closed, but it will also happen when the register is full.
To find out where a Primitive Methodist register has been deposited, go to the National Archives catalogue at http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ and search using the words “Primitive Methodist” and the place in which you are interested, or the county.
Data Protection legislation will restrict access to those entries over 100 years old.
Some of our deposited registers are now available online. In the case of any compiled before 1837 these are described on another page on this site. This page is a guide to whether Primitive Methodist registers up to 1932 are currently available online, in print, or whether you need to visit a record office.

At its peak, just before Methodist Union in 1932, the Primitive Methodist Connexion had 4,600 places of worship. Not all of them possessed baptismal registers, few possessed graveyards (so would not have a burial register) and not all were registered for the conduct of marriages.
The map indicates how the registers might be accessed, on the basis of modern county. All the main genealogical platforms (Ancestry, Find My Past and Family Search) have been working with record offices to digitise registers. The Methodist Church in Britain now gives permission for our records to be included in these collections, so expect to see more Methodist baptismal records appearing online. The counties where this has already happened are marked in black on the map. Local record societies, and contributors to the Online Parish Clerk network (OPC) or FreeREG have provided transcripts of other registers. The majority, however, may only be accessed in the record office in which they have been deposited. The best way of locating the original registers is access the National Archives catalogue as described above.

If a chapel has a register it will most likely be for baptisms. It was not legal to marry anywhere but a parish church until 1857. Even then, the Registrar was required to be present, which seems to have discouraged chapels from registering to hold marriages. Most Methodist marriage registers date from after 1898 when ministers were allowed to act on behalf of the Registrar. Certificates obtainable from the General Registry Office, or local Registry offices, will tell you if a marriage took place in the chapel.

The Eureka Partnership are currently publishing printed transcriptions of Primitive Methodist registers. Registers from the following counties are in print, or available as downloads:
Bedfordshire
Berkshire
Buckinghamshire
Essex
Hampshire
Northamptonshire
Oxfordshire
Wiltshire
Worcestershire