Hampshire Probate Records

England &gt; Hampshire County

For an explanation of probate records in England, click here.

Court Jurisdictions
Before 1858, every town and parish in Hampshire was under the probate jurisdiction of a primary ecclesiastical court and one or more secondary ecclesiastical courts. Here is a list of places in Hampshire beginning with the letter A and the pre-1858 ecclesiastical courts that had probate jurisdiction over them. Search the courts in the order given. Search indexes first. For indexes, click on a parish name or see Probate Indexes Online below.

To see other Hampshire parishes, click on the letter that the parish begins with: B-C, D-H, I-O, P-U, V-Z.

Probate Indexes Online
Before looking for a will, you should search an index. http://calm.hants.gov.uk/DserveA/search.htm

Hampshire Record Office

http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/BRKwills/

This is a collection of about 1000 abstracts of probate documents relating to people residing in the neighbourhood of the towns of Hungerford and Wantage in Berkshire. Since Hungerford is on the County boundary there is some spread into Wiltshire and to a lesser extent into Hampshire and Oxfordshire.

http://history.wiltshire.gov.uk/heritage/index.php

905 probate documents under place of Hampshire The first stage of our on-line catalogue project provides access to a detailed catalogue of wills, 1540-1858, held in the Wiltshire and Swindon Archives (also known as Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office). The catalogue also contains (for about 25% of the wills) digital images of probate records.

Post-1857 Probate Records
Beginning in 1858, the government took over the settlement of estates and all wills are now probated through the Principal Probate Registry system. The system consists of 11 district registry offices and 18 sub-district registries, located throughout England and Wales, and the principal registry office located in London. The records are available through the office of Her Majesty's Courts Service. To learn more, go to the HMCS website.

A country-wide surname index to the records is available, so it is much easier to look for post-1857 wills. The indexes for 1858-1957 and the records for 1858-1925 are available on microfilm at the Family History Library.