Births, Marriages and Deaths

Registering Births, Marriages and Deaths

Eastbourne Borough Council is not responsible for registering births, marriages or deaths in Eastbourne. You should contact Eastbourne Register Office.

Family History

Births, marriages and deaths were legally required to be registered from 1837 (though parish records existed for many hundreds of years prior to this date).

Where To Find Records of Births, Marriages and Deaths

Brighton Local History library has all the indexes to the certificates up to 1990 on microfiche. These are arranged per year, per quarter in alphabetical order.

An excellent, free, online resource compiled by volunteers is FreeBMD. This allows deeper searches on specific names and places.  It now holds over 145 million indexes and is well on its way to way to becoming complete.

Additionally, websites such as Ancestry, The Genealogist and Find My Past allow you to search the same index pages for a small fee.

Details Required to Order Certificates

If you find the person you are looking for, the index will give you the Registration area, then the volume and page of the registration. Make a note of these as you can then order a copy of the certificate from the General Register Office (GRO). You can order online or by post.

If you happen to know which Parish a birth, marriage or death was registered in (this is not always the same as the indexed Registration area), that area's local registrar should be able to provide a copy of the certificate. Always check first as many have limited staff resources.

See our Certificates page for details of what helpful information is shown on certificates.

You can find out more about Eastbourne Register Office and other Register Offices in England and Wales in our Local Resources and Useful Links Directories.