Parish Registers

The registers have been in a poor condition for very many years, and had to be repaired after they had been deposited at the Ruthin Record Office. The church was given facsimile copies of the repaired registers.

• The following Parish Registers have been deposited at the Denbighshire Record Office, Ruthin.
  They may be viewed on microfilm at the Denbighshire and Flintshire Record Offices, and at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.
  These microfilms are not available elsewhere.

The Rector of Llanrwst loaned the facsimile copies of the repaired registers to the Clwyd Family History Society for transcribing.
The Society is grateful to Mr. Alun Rawson Williams, of Denbigh, for his assistance in making available to the Society transcripts which his father made in the early 1930s. Soon after he had made these transcripts, a storm blew open the door of the church vestry, and scattered some pages of the registers across the open countryside. Some were recovered, but many were lost. The Society was therefore fortunate to have these transcripts, which are the only extant copies of many pages of the registers. The entries for 1696 were taken from the only early Bishop's Transcripts to have survived.

• Clwyd FHS has published full transcriptions of the registers (complete with indexes) for the following years :

Bishop's Transcripts

• Bishop's Transcripts for the years shown below have been deposited in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.
  Around the year 1951, most of the Bishop's Transcripts which had been deposited at that time were microfilmed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and the films are available on request at Family History Centres of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
  The films may also be viewed at the Denbighshire and Flintshire Record Offices, and at the National Library of Wales.
  In general, the Bishop's Transcripts are less complete than the parish registers.

I.G.I.

• There are no official I.G.I. entries for the parish church of Capel Garmon .

Historically, the (Anglican) Church in Wales was an integral part of the Church of England - i.e. the "Established" Church. Its influence declined during the nineteenth century, when a considerable proportion of the people of Wales - perhaps more than half - became adherents of the various nonconformist denominations; and eventually, in 1920, following many decades of religious and political debate, and intermittent civil disturbances, the Church in Wales ( not "Church of Wales") was disestablished and disendowed - i.e. it ceased to be the "State" or "Established" Church.

Because of this, the Parochial Registers and Records Measure of 1978, regarding the care of parish records of the Church of England, does not apply to Wales.

However - in 1944, the Representative Body of the Church in Wales showed considerable foresight, by making an agreement with the National Library of Wales whereby various Church records would be deposited in the Library; and in 1976, the Representative Body reached an agreement with the majority of the Welsh counties, which designated the county Record Offices as additional suitable repositories. The Archbishop of Wales issued instructions as to which records should be deposited, and appointed Diocesan Advisors to ensure that his instructions were followed. Virtually all parish registers for Denbighshire (with the obvious exception of those in current use), together with various other records, have now been deposited in Denbighshire Record Office and/or the National Library of Wales.

Members of the public are not normally allowed to handle the original registers. The policy of the Denbighshire Record Office is to microfilm the registers on receipt; and members of the public are expected to use copies of these microfilms, rather than the original registers, in the Record Office searchrooms.

Clwyd FHS has published full transcriptions, with indexes, of all the parish registers of Denbighshire, up to 1812 (and in a few cases, up to 1837 and beyond). Copies of all the transcribed parish registers published by Clwyd FHS are available for study at the Denbighshire Record Office.

England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index Marriages 1754 - 1837 on Tinstaafl Transcripts  - Work in progress

Family Search UK/Ireland - Historical Record Collections 
IGI Batch Numbers - Hugh Wallis's site  and Archer Software's site

National Library of Wales  

• An online searchable index of Marriage Bonds and Allegations. It contains details of some 90,000 marriages by licence which took place in Wales between 1616 and 1837.
  In early 2016 the NLW made changes in its online catalogue and now the only apparent method of finding these bonds is to search the main catalogue
• Search here for wills proved in the Welsh Ecclesiastical Courts before 1858.

Parish registers  in the library of the Society of Genealogists.
"Members can gain access to the exclusive Society of Genealogists facilities on the website. Online Data will provide access to all of the SoG Data published on line through findmypast.co.uk plus more specialised data from the Library in the form of transcripts, indexes, PDFs of books and images. Also available are electronic versions of the Genealogy Magazine.  Check out what is currently available online before joining

Tips for searching the Church in Wales Diocesan Records - at the NLW

• "In 1944 the Church in Wales began to deposit the records of every Welsh diocese in the National Library of Wales, for the benefit of the nation.  These included the records of the four ancient dioceses of Bangor, Llandaff, St. Asaph and St. Davids, and the two modern dioceses of Monmouth and Swansea & Brecon. Documents, manuscripts, maps and drawings were deposited initially, and the Library continues to receive regular deposits to this day."

Family Search UK/Ireland - Historical Record Collections
IGI Batch Numbers - Hugh Wallis's site and Archer Software's site

The A2A database of pre 1858 probate entries for the Welsh dioceses is at the National Archives site.

• UK & Ireland - Church Records - links and information.