Catalogue description General Register Office and successors: Places of Religious Worship Certifying Act 1852 and Places of Worship Registration Act 1855: Certificates

This Series consists of certificates which are bound into volumes in numerical order. The covering dates and certificate numbers are endorsed on the spine of the volumes.

The forms are entitled"Forms for certifying a place of meeting for religious worship under the Places of Religious Worship Certifying Act 1852 and subsequently the Places of Worship Registration Act 1855".

The following information is given: name of person certifying; rank/profession; address; name of building; situation of building; sub-district; Registration District; name/denomination of congregation; date of certification; General Registration Office signature.

Because of the possibility of de-registration the registers or indexes in which this fact is noted are still"live" and continue to be held in the Marriages Branch of the Office for National Statistics, Southport.

A return of all places of meeting which up to 1852 had been certified to or registered in the Court of the Bishop or Archdeacon respectively, or had been certified to the Justices of the Peace, or recorded at Quarter Sessions, was made to the Registrar General in that year and is to be found in:

RG 31

General Register Office, Registration Division, 1836-1970

From 2001 Office for National Statistics

Under the provisions of the Toleration Act of 1689 Protestant dissenting congregations were required to register their meeting places with Clerks of the Peace of the County, City or Borough or with the appropriate Bishop or Archdeacon. Similar provision for the registration of Roman Catholic chapels was made under the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791. The Places of Religious Worship Certifying Act 1852 abolished ecclesiastical, while retaining lay registration, by transfering the functions to the Registrar General. Non-Conformists continued to object to the compulsory nature of registration which the Act had perpetuated and in 1855 the Places of Worship Registration Act, which made registration permissive, replaced the 1852 legislation. This Act also made registration of a place of worship a prerequisite for registration of the premises for the solemnisation of marriages. De-registration could also take place under this Act by ministers, trustees or other responsible persons. De-registrations are printed in the London Gazette. The 1852 Act required the Registrar General to prepare annually from the register a printed list of registrations for circulation to Superintendent Registrars, at whose offices it would be open to public inspection without charge. No lists made under this Act are known to survive. The 1856 Act provided that a list should be compiled and printed in 1856 and periodically thereafter. Few of these survive for the nineteenth century. In 1902 the Official List of Places Registered for the Solemnisation of Marriage was enlarged to include all registered places of worship and published in this form annually until 1915. From 1915 to date publication has been at intervals of several years with the issue of annual addenda. As the legislation of 1852 did not include sanctions and the Act of 1855 was only permissive it cannot be assumed that the Register is complete. However registration offered certain advantages such as exemption of a congregation's funds from public inspection under the Charitable Trusts Act 1853 and, since 1955, exemption of the place of worship from liability for Rates (and subsequently Council Tax).