Find your ancestors in Surrey, Southwark Marriages

What can these records tell me?

Each search result provides a transcription of the original document and a digital image of that document. The exact information contained within any one entry may depend both upon the date and place and upon the customs and beliefs of the denomination registering the event. However, you should be able to find out a combination of the following:

• Names of bride and groom
• Marriage date
• Marriage place
• Age, marital status, occupation, residence etc
• Father’s name

Discover more about these records

These records are among the first releases from Findmypast’s partnership with Southwark Archives, the archive serving the London Borough of Southwark. This area of London south of the Thames was part of the historical and ceremonial county of Surrey, but its importance to the social and cultural functioning of the City has always been recognised. As it was situated outside the jurisdiction of the City of London, it also enjoyed a reputation for counter-cultural tendencies, such as when, in Shakespeare’s day, playhouses sprang up alongside the many inns, bowling alleys, gambling dens and other venues we are too polite to mention.

The Archives hold an appropriately diverse collection of records. Our first publications relate to registers created by the Non-Conformist, or Dissenting, denominations of Southwark. These mainly cover the C19th and early C20th and are drawn from Baptist, Congregational (Independent) and Methodist chapels across different parts of the borough. Generally, before the appearance of civil registration in England & Wales in 1837, these congregations created marriage registers not too dissimilar from those generated by the Established Anglican Church and its Roman Catholic counterpart; while from the summer of 1837 they used the familiar landscape-format registers usually recording two marriages per page.

The marriage collection relates to a number of Baptist and Methodist congregations which were located in the London Borough of Southwark. These include chapels near the River Thames in Bermondsey and Borough but also others in Camberwell and Peckham, to the south of the Borough.