Accessing parish registers for Herefordshire, England
I am a user of an affiliated library in Scotland. I have been using the parish registers for Herefordshire, England, and one of the registers I have been using regularly, Much Cowarne, has been restricted. It was available in March 2025 but by October it was not.
In October 2025, I got the message:
Image Restricted
Image access is typically determined by local laws or the custodian who has the original document.
I contacted Herefordshire Archives, the custodians of the registers. A member of staff has confirmed that they have not been approached about access or restrictions on these registers.
I contacted eu_support@familysearch.org but they were unable to help, except to suggest that all the records in this DGS may have been “depublished” and I should try again later. 8 months later they are still unavailable.
I checked again yesterday and got the message:
This item is not currently digitally accessible due to access restrictions
Much Cowarne is in DGS 07567559 and it contains 2 parish registers, Much Cowarne and Much Birch, which is similarly unavailable.
Can anyone explain what is going on please? Is it likely that access to these registers will ever be restored?
Best Answer
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This film was restricted on 22 September 2025, during the period when FamilySearch was updating access permissions across all collections. After reviewing the current metadata, I found two issues that would automatically trigger a restriction: the date range and record type both reflect the entire film rather than the individual item numbers.
I’ve submitted a work order to have this corrected. While I can’t guarantee that updating the metadata will restore access—since that ultimately depends on the terms of the contract—it’s a necessary step and hopefully will make a difference for the groups that are well within privacy guidelines.
It may take up to a month for the update to completely process.
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Answers
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@JuneWilling - as a British researcher of some years, I can find no reason for this restriction. This doesn't mean that there isn't a good reason, just that I can't find it. (And see my last paragraph here for a possibility)
The first problem is that the simple statement
"… Image access is typically determined by local laws or the custodian who has the original document. …"
is simply not adequate. At least in the case of the UK, image access may also be determined by contractual reasons that are determined not by the record custodian but by other commercial companies that have agreements in place with FS. Just to be clear, I shall repeat my usual mantra that I don't want to know the contents of these agreements, but I would like to know that it's a deliberate agreement and not a mistype or misunderstanding.
I checked to see if I could find who has Much Cowarne PRs - FindMyPast appear to have Herefordshire Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, but these are indexes (not transcripts) with no images. And the indexes come from FamilySearch anyway according to FindMyPast.
There are some odd transcriptions published elsewhere but I can't see if Much Cowarne is in them - and in any case, they are transcripts, not images.
My only suggestion for a restriction is this… @SerraNola - is there a possibility that the DGS in question has been restricted because it contains marriages in the 1950s and baptisms in the 1930s? (Which they do…) There are lots of items within the DGS but I'm never clear whether access can be determined at the Item level across the board yet.
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Thank you, that is helpful. It could be because of the recent (20th century) baptisms and marriages. These registers must have been available for some time and have unfortunately been made unavailable when I was in the middle of using them. It looks like I will have to make the journey from Glasgow to Hereford, just like we all had to do before the WWW was invented. You are correct, Herefordshire is a parish registers black hole, nobody has the images, apart from Family Search. In the course of enquiring about this with Herefordshire Archives, a member of staff said: "we are one of the few remaining counties where our registers have not been digitised so are not available online". She knew that LDS libraries had the registers on microfilm but was surprised to learn that the LDS had put the registers online, without consulting the archives.
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@JuneWilling said:
"... She knew that LDS libraries had the registers on microfilm but was surprised to learn that the LDS had put the registers online, without consulting the archives. ..."
Ouch. That sounds disturbing. It's always risky trusting too much in one person who, with the best will in the world, might be out of the loop, but if that person does know what they're talking about, then this could be an explanation - perhaps the Archives has never given FS (or anyone?) the requisite permission to publish the images for anywhere in their area.
Update - I'm failing to find PR baptism images of people in Herefordshire with the surname Bruce. BTs yes, but that may be a different archive.
So maybe I failed to consider the basic question of whether permission for any PR images for Herefordshire had been given. Apologies. Maybe?
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I agree that the person at the archives may be out of the loop, but actually there is nothing I can do about that. I should add that in her final e-mail she came back and said that she did not consider publishing the images on the FS website which can only be accessed at an LDS library or an affiliate to be "available online". The logic of this escapes me, but it is immaterial, really. These registers are not available from the commercial data providers and I was delighted to find I could access them from close to home, so that I do not have to waste days in the archives searching these when I visit Hereford. I can concentrate on the other material in the archives. Then they were suddenly removed from everyone. Herefordshire BTs are kept in the same place, Herefordshire Archives, but BTs are of no use to me, because they typically start around 1660, and I need earlier dates. I only have this problem with these registers, others from Herefordshire are available, such as Stretton Grandison. I have just checked the catalog for Stretton Grandison and they have marriages and burials in the 20th century, up to the 1970s, but I definitely saw the registers two days ago. So perhaps they will be withdrawn without warning at any time. Thanks for your thoughts anyway.
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Thank you, that's great. As I do not need access to recent items, I hope that the update will allow access to the earliest item which I was using. I appreciate what you have done and I will check again a month or two down the line.
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