Web Resources: General Register Office

This year, for Christmas, I asked my wife to order me my dad's birth certificate. I didn't know much about his birth, so I thought that this would be a nice way of getting to know a bit more about him and to have the certificate for family members to see.

I had looked on certificate swapping websites (links below) and found that there were no certificates for my dad on there, so I headed straight to the GRO website.

The GRO website is well laid out and many certificate types can be purchased from it. The current price is £9.25 including delivery.

As this was my first time, I wasn't exactly sure what was required for the GRO Reference Number, so I called them. I spoke to a nice lady that made the process very easy.

After quickly creating an account with them, the information I was asked to provide was all found on the index page that I had open on my laptop:
Name, Quarter, Vol, Page, District.
But I also found that you could provide name, location, and date of birth; but that it would take around a week longer to receive the certificate.

I was surprisingly pleased at how easy the whole process was and next time I'll have the confidence to go through the whole process online.

But what new information did I find from the Birth Certificate? I'll be writing about that next time.

ETA:  There is currently a PDF Pilot which means birth entries from 1837 - 1917 and death entries from 1837 - 1957 can be purchased for £6 and sent to you as a PDF rather than a paper copy. (24/07/2018)

Links

GRO Certificate Ordering Service

Certificate Exchange

BMD Share

Cost:	£9.25 per certificate
Language:	English
Usability:	100%