Researching your family history

To quote the Denbighshire County Council website:

"The Denbighshire Record Office is to be found in the former County Gaol, a Grade II listed building. Use of the record office is free and open to anyone, whether you are an experienced researcher or an absolute beginner. The only qualifications necessary are interest, a desire to find out more, and the time to devote to it. It is necessary to make an appointment prior to your visit, by contacting the record office by telephone, as there is a booking system for microfilm readers, microfiche and records such as census returns 1841-91 and parish registers for all of the former county of Clwyd are available only in this format. The Denbighshire Record Office can help you if you are interested in the history of your family."

If you are thinking of coming to Ruthin to research your family history, maybe we can help.

For example: you may already have lots of information about your ancestors. You know where the old family home is, where certain ancestors went to school and also where they are buried. You will need help to to find these places and may need guidance to get to them. We can supply you with maps and directions and local knowledge. Remember that finding places in Wales can be tricky what with all the 'Llans'!

We could accompany you, as guides, taking you to the relevant places, helping to take photos and make sure you get the most out of each moment.

Alternatively, you may know very little about your ancestors, other than their name was Jones and they lived near Ruthin. The best place to start is Record Office in Ruthin to try to find which parish they’re from and to check Census Records. Therefore we could help by:
Pointing you in the direction of Ruthin Record Office and showing you how to make the staff there do the leg work. When you bring back information in the evening, perhaps we could go through it with you, helping you to make some sense of it

Finally, we could do some research for you. We would need to get lots of information from you when you book. This will give us time to try to find the parishes and census information before you arrive. We would do the research at the Record Office ourselves, with the help of the staff. When you arrive we then have information to give you, re locations, some history of the family (where they lived, who they were, etc). This will obviously take us a fair amount of time, for which we would charge on an hourly/daily basis, according to how much time we spend researching at the Record Office.

Contact us with your needs and we'll see what we can do.