Find your ancestors in Shropshire Banns

Each record comprises a transcript and a colour image of the original parish register of the marriage banns.

The amount of information included varies, but the Shropshire Banns records usually include the following information about your ancestor:

• Full names of the bride and groom
• Places of residence of the bride and groom
• Date of banns
• Date of marriage

Some records may also include other details. These may not always be transcribed, but you may be able to see them on the scanned image of the original record. Further details may include:

• Previous marital status such as ‘bachelor,’ ‘spinster,’ or ‘widower’
• Dates of the three Sundays the banns were published

Discover more about the Shropshire Banns

The record set comprises almost 42,245 banns from around 100 Anglican parishes in Shropshire, England.

These records date from 1760 to 1900.

An ancient legal tradition, banns are an announcement in church of a couple’s intention to marry. The reading of the banns provides an opportunity for anybody to put forward a reason why the marriage may not lawfully take place. Banns must be read in the parish (or parishes) in which the couple lives and in the parish they will marry, on three Sundays in the three months before the wedding.

Salop is the old name for the West Midlands county of Shropshire. It was renamed Shropshire by order of the county council in 1980. The county town is Shrewsbury.

These records belong to the Shropshire Collection, a unique set of records spanning baptisms, banns, marriages and burials, which provides details of the history of Shropshire and its people. These records are from the diocese of Shropshire; note that dioceses can cross county borders. Shropshire borders Wales, and there are a number of records from Montgomeryshire in Wales in these records.