Transcripts of parish registers were required by orders of 1562 and 1597, although no 16th century transcripts survive for Durham diocese. The 1812 Parochial Registers Act formalised and standardised the style of the transcripts.
For most parishes in the diocese of Durham the surviving bishops' transcripts cover the period from about 1760 - mid-19th century. The majority of the earlier transcripts were lost at an unknown date before the transfer here of the Diocesan Records. There are usually gaps in the sequence, especially during the earlier years. Few transcripts of marriage entries were made after the introduction of civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in 1837 but those of baptismal and burial entries were still sent in from many parishes for some years after that. Sending in parish-register transcripts to the diocesan registrar was beginning to die out from the late 1830s, so none were made for many of the new parishes and chapelries formed around that time. Some transcripts of the registers of Society of Friends burial-grounds from the 1860s until the 1890s survive here; these were made as a result of the 1864 Registration of Burials Act (27 & 28 Victoria, c.97), one clause of which required that copies of entries in all burial-ground registers should be transmitted to diocesan registrars. A few of these transcripts relate to Society of Friends burial-grounds in the diocese of York (i.e. Ayresome, Cotherstone and Osmotherley).
From the guide to the Durham Diocesan Records: Bishops' transcripts of parish registers and related records, 1503-1863, (Durham University Library, Archives and Special Collections)
